Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has plunged the British farming industry into deep financial uncertainty, driving sharp increases in the cost of fuel and fertiliser. Red diesel prices have soared by 60%, while nitrogen fertiliser is now approximately £50 more expensive per tonne compared with 2025. For farmers already operating on narrow margins, increased pressure on production has exacerbated concerns over profitability and long-term resilience.

Against this backdrop, the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has unveiled a new Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI26): a £240 million scheme designed to support family farms, strengthen resilience, and help industry stakeholders meet the demands of modern agriculture. The funding package also includes an additional £50 million for new Countryside Stewardship Higher Tier (CSHT) agreements, available from this year to support targeted environmental improvements where they will have the greatest impact.

This announcement represents one of the Labour Government’s more significant interventions in rural policy since taking office, but questions remain over whether the funding package will be sufficient to achieve its ambitious environmental goals.

Public Money for Public Goods: Sustainable Farming Incentive

The scheme forms part of the government’s wider Environmental Land Management (ELM) framework, which is centred around the principle of “public money for public goods”. Under this approach, farmers receive financial support in exchange for adopting practices that deliver environmental benefits. These include improving biodiversity, protecting wildlife habitats, enhancing water quality, reducing soil degradation, and helping communities become more resilient to environmental hazards such as flooding and drought.

According to Environment Secretary Emma Reynolds, SFI26 seeks to address the inadequacies of the previous Sustainable Farming Incentive, which was suspended in 2025 after reaching its funding cap. Ministers argue that the earlier scheme disproportionately benefited larger landowners; Reynolds claims that “a quarter of funding went to just four percent of farms”.

The revised programme is intended to be simpler, fairer, and more accessible, particularly for smaller and family-run farms which often struggle with administrative requirements. Announcing the package, Reynolds explained, “We redesigned it to be simpler and fairer, helping more farms grow, boost productivity and protect the natural environment they depend on”.

A Gap Between Funding and Ambition?

However, this announcement has already been met with concerns that the package will not stretch far enough. The National Farmers’ Union (NFU) has welcomed efforts to simplify and broaden access to environmental funding but argues that government ambition is not being matched by investment.

Vice-President Robyn Munt is reportedly “incredibly frustrated” and has warned that “the budget won’t stretch far enough to support those already delivering for nature to move into SFI26”. For the NFU, the issue is not simply how funding is distributed, but whether it will enable farmers to deliver on the government’s own environmental and food-security objectives.

These concerns are heightened by an already strained relationship between the British farming community and the Labour administration. Rachel Reeves’ 2024 budget proved unpopular among farmers, particularly the proposed reforms to Agricultural Property Relief which limit inheritance tax exemptions on family farms. Celebrity farm owner, Jeremy Clarkson, has been particularly vocal in his criticism of Government measures, condemning the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s plan as “actively anti-farming”.

In the latest episode of Clarkson’s Farm, he also expressed frustration over the bureaucracy associated with accessing the revised CSHT grants, clashing with farm manager Charlie Ireland over specifications required for a government-funded ‘small leaky woody dam’ project. His objections highlight a tension at the heart of Labour’s reforms: whether the government can simplify access to environmental funding while maintaining the standards required to produce positive ecological outcomes.

It is clear that the Government has set out an ambitious, legally binding vision for sustainable agriculture, but whether SFI26 can successfully cut the red tape, deliver meaningful environmental gains, and rebuild farmers’ trust, remains to be seen.

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Photo Credit: Hawkstone and Number 10

Paul Davies MP

Member of Parliament for Colne Valley Chair, All-Party Parliamentary Group for Tackling Loneliness and Connected Communities

This article on Trauma Responsive Practice is taken the foreword of a joint report from Curia and UKHLSI in partnership with the West Yorkshire Health and Care partnership. The report was drafted following a Parliamentary Roundtable which took place on the 2nd of March 2026. You can find the report here.

Across Parliament and across the country, there is growing recognition that trauma responsive practice is not a niche concern for one service, profession or sector. It is a national issue that touches every part of public life, from health and education to policing, justice, employment and community life.

Trauma does not recognise departmental boundaries, political ideologies or geographic borders. It affects individuals, families and communities everywhere, and our public services are increasingly dealing with its consequences every day.

Trauma Responsive Practice Is a National Issue

The case for trauma responsive practice has never been stronger. We are living through an increasingly uncertain period, shaped by economic pressure, social instability and global conflict. These pressures are not abstract. They are felt in our communities, in our schools, in our workplaces and across our public services. If we are serious about prevention, early intervention and long-term reform, we must also be serious about understanding trauma and responding to it properly.

Trauma responsive practice is both compassionate and practical. It is an evidence-based approach that can improve outcomes, reduce long-term costs and help build stronger, healthier and more resilient communities.

Building Consensus Across Politics and Public Services

One of the most important aspects of the discussions reflected in this report is the extent to which this agenda already commands cross-party support. The parliamentary roundtable and reception, hosted by myself as Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Tackling Loneliness and Connected Communities, brought together representatives from different political parties, professions and sectors. They were united by a shared understanding that trauma affects every part of society and therefore requires a whole-system response.

This is not a party-political issue. It is a human issue, a public service issue and, increasingly, a national policy issue. The fact that leaders from health, local government, policing, academia and the voluntary sector are working together on this agenda demonstrates that meaningful change will only happen through collaboration across traditional boundaries.

The discussions also focused heavily on the North of England, and rightly so. As a Member of Parliament in West Yorkshire, I know the North faces significant challenges, including higher levels of socio-economic and health inequality, alongside significant levels of adverse childhood experiences. However, the North is also leading the way in developing trauma responsive approaches, with pioneering work taking place across West Yorkshire, Greater Manchester, Humber and North Yorkshire, and beyond.

The North of England’s Leadership in Trauma Responsive Practice

These areas are showing what can be achieved when local leaders, public services and communities work together around a shared vision. The North of England therefore provides not only a case for change, but also a model for how change can be delivered: locally led, partnership-based and grounded in lived experience and evidence.

What became clear throughout both the roundtable and the reception is that the evidence base already exists. We understand the impact of adverse childhood experiences. We understand the links between trauma and long-term health, social and economic outcomes. We understand the importance of early intervention, trusted relationships and community support. The sessions demonstrated that we no longer need to test whether trauma responsive practice works. We now need to move from evidence to action and implementation.

That is the challenge now facing policymakers, public services and communities alike. We must ensure that the learning, innovation and best practice already emerging across the North of England and across the country are not lost. They must be embedded, scaled and supported through national policy and local leadership. This will require coordination, resource and a long-term commitment to prevention and system change.

The discussions in Parliament, and captured in this report, demonstrate that if we get this right, trauma responsive practice has the potential not only to improve individual lives, but also to strengthen public services, reduce long-term demand and build healthier, more resilient communities across the country.

The task now is to move from conversation to action.

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Dr Mark Ratnarajah

Clinical Director, Sword Intelligence

AI In Healthcare Conference: On the eve of NHS ConfedExpo 2026, Dr Mark Ratnarajah joined senior NHS, policy and health technology leaders at a private UKHLSI and Sword Intelligence dinner in Manchester to discuss how artificial intelligence can help the NHS move from queues to coordinated care. This article reflects on why the NHS must now look beyond abstract debates about innovation and begin redesigning services around the operational capacity that AI can already provide.

Beyond the AI in Healthcare Conference Conversation

There is a ritual familiar to anyone who has spent time in NHS leadership. You attend the conference. You absorb the keynotes. You collect the lanyards, the policy language and the optimism. Then, on the journey home, the weight of the actual waiting list settles back over you.

That is why last night’s conversation mattered.

It was not another session about artificial intelligence in the abstract. It was not a room full of people rehearsing familiar arguments about innovation, transformation or future potential. It was a practical discussion about what is already possible, what is still getting in the way, and what the NHS now needs the confidence to do differently.

I have been in and around the NHS for nearly thirty years, as a practising paediatrician, as an investor and as a builder of health technology companies. The most useful conversations I have had about transforming healthcare have rarely happened in conference halls. They happen around tables, after hours, when people stop speaking in official language and start speaking plainly about what is actually broken.

That was the value of last night.

The NHS does not lack people who care. It does not lack clinical expertise, managerial commitment or a deep understanding of the pressures facing patients and staff. What it does lack, too often, is the operational infrastructure to match the scale of the challenge.

Across England, millions of referrals are still processed through systems designed for a paper-based world. Outpatient waiting lists persist not only because of clinical capacity constraints, but because of the administrative friction that surrounds care – the appointments, triage, follow ups, referral management and coordination tasks that consume time before a patient is ever seen.

From AI Debate to Delivery at NHS ConfedExpo 2026

This is where agentic AI changes the conversation.

Intelligent agents can now support care coordination at a scale and speed that no human workforce could realistically replicate. They can read referrals, triage risk, manage appointments, identify exceptions and surface the moments where clinical judgement is most needed. This is not about replacing clinicians. It is about removing the coordination burden that has built up around them over decades.

Last night’s discussion made clear that the question is no longer whether this technology can work. It is whether we are prepared to organise services around what is now possible.

That requires more than curiosity. It requires commitment from the people who sit across policy, delivery, technology and government. It requires NHS leaders to see operational redesign not as a side project, but as one of the central routes to better access, better productivity and better patient care.

Freeing Clinicians to Focus on Judgement and Care

The deeper question is not technical. It is human.

If intelligent agents take on more of the routine coordination work, what are we freeing people to do? What should clinicians, managers and leaders be spending more of their time on? In a system where the routine can be automated, the exceptional becomes the domain of human expertise – prevention, complexity, relationships, judgement and leadership.

That is a future worth building towards.

Last night was a reminder that the gap between the NHS we have and the NHS we need is not only a funding gap or a workforce gap. It is also an imagination gap – and, at times, a willingness gap.

The conference may continue today, but the most important work began in the room last night: a serious, honest conversation about how we move from queue to care.

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Photo: Dr Mark Ratnarajah and The Right Honourable Andrew Stephenson CBE

Sword Intelligence are members of UK Healthcare and Life Sciences Innovation (UKHLSI) https://intelligence.sword.com/. UKHLSI organised the dinner at NHS Confed Expo in partnership.

European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) withdrawal would do little to address illegal migration while creating serious constitutional, diplomatic and security risks for the United Kingdom, according to a major new report launched this week by the Conservative European Forum (CEF).

Authored by former Attorney General Rt Hon Dominic Grieve KC, the report argues that leaving the European Convention on Human Rights has become a “false solution” to a complex and pressing challenge. Instead of pursuing withdrawal, Grieve calls for reform of the Convention’s application in migration cases, closer cooperation with European partners, and practical measures to improve returns and border enforcement.

The report, Patchwork Quilts and Threadbare Solutions: Why Proposals to Control Irregular Migration by Leaving the ECHR Would Not Work, directly challenges the growing argument within Conservative circles that departure from the Convention is a necessary prerequisite for tougher immigration controls.

According to the report, the evidence does not support claims that the ECHR has significantly obstructed the UK’s ability to deport foreign criminals or control irregular migration. Between April 2016 and June 2021, only 922 foreign national offenders successfully appealed deportation on human rights grounds, representing around 3.5 per cent of all deportation cases. Appeals based solely on Article 8 family life rights accounted for an even smaller proportion.

Since 1980, there have been only twenty-nine judgments by the European Court of Human Rights concerning removals from the UK, with just thirteen resulting in findings against the Government. The UK was found in breach of the Convention only once in 2023 and once in 2024.

ECHR Reform Rather Than Withdrawal

Rather than advocating withdrawal, the report calls for substantial reform of how Convention rights are interpreted in immigration cases.

Grieve argues that Article 3 protections concerning healthcare and prison conditions should be more narrowly applied, while Article 8 family life considerations require firmer guidance for immigration tribunals and officials. He also supports domestic reforms including changes to the Human Rights Act, a strengthened public interest test in immigration cases, and the introduction of a single appeals route modelled on the Danish system.

“The current Conservative policy to leave the ECHR is not merely flawed and incapable of delivering its stated objectives to tackle illegal migration – it is actively preventing us from developing policies that could work,” Grieve said.

The report also highlights the opportunity presented by the recent European migration summit in Chișinău, where several countries discussed reforming migration frameworks and strengthening cooperation on returns.

Among its recommendations are a new European sanctions regime targeting countries that refuse to accept the return of their nationals, closer collaboration with the European Union, and renewed UK access to key security databases including Eurodac and the Schengen Information System (SIS II).

Constitutional and Security Risks

A significant section of the report focuses on the wider consequences of withdrawing from the Convention.

It argues that leaving the ECHR would create substantial constitutional difficulties across the UK. Convention rights are embedded within the devolution settlements for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, while the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement explicitly commits the UK to incorporating Convention rights into Northern Irish law.

The report warns that withdrawal could undermine political stability in Northern Ireland and provoke fresh disputes over the interpretation of the peace settlement.

Beyond domestic concerns, Grieve argues that departure from the Convention could damage Britain’s standing within the Council of Europe and potentially jeopardise aspects of UK-EU security cooperation. Existing arrangements covering law enforcement cooperation, passenger data sharing, extradition processes and access to criminal intelligence systems could all come under pressure.

The report notes that abandoning the ECHR would not remove many of the legal protections currently available to migrants, as the UK would remain bound by a range of international treaties and longstanding common law principles, including obligations relating to non-refoulement.

A European Solution to a European Challenge

The report concludes that irregular migration is a challenge shared across Europe and one that requires coordinated international action rather than unilateral withdrawal from established legal frameworks.

CEF President Sir David Lidington said the Conservative Party was right to prioritise migration but argued that proposals to leave the ECHR required much greater scrutiny. He pointed to previous examples, including the Brighton Declaration negotiations, as evidence that meaningful reform of the Convention can be achieved through political engagement.

Former Justice Secretary Sir Robert Buckland similarly argued that the UK should seize the opportunity to shape reforms already being discussed across Europe rather than embarking on a lengthy withdrawal process.

CEF Chair Stephen Hammond said the report demonstrated that leaving the Convention would solve none of the practical problems at Britain’s borders while risking lasting damage to the Union and international security partnerships.

The report concludes that any future Conservative migration strategy must move beyond what it describes as the “threadbare solution” of ECHR withdrawal and instead focus on practical reforms, stronger international cooperation and more effective administration of the asylum and deportation system. As debate over migration continues to dominate politics across Europe, Grieve’s intervention seeks to reframe the discussion around reform rather than withdrawal.

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Photo Credits: Mickaël Schauli and Attorney General’s Office

New agentic AI platform uses large scale human genetics data to support faster, safer and more effective medicine development.

Genomics has launched Mystra AI, a new agentic artificial intelligence platform designed to help scientists identify and validate drug targets using large scale human genetics data.

The UK founded TechBio company says the platform will make genetic insights easier to access across pharmaceutical and biotech research teams, helping researchers make better decisions earlier in the drug development process.

The launch comes as the pharmaceutical industry faces continuing pressure over the cost, risk and productivity of research and development. Genomics says 95 per cent of drug candidates entering clinical trials fail, with the average cost of bringing a new medicine to market now exceeding $2.3 billion according to Deloitte.

By using human genetic evidence to strengthen decisions about which targets to pursue, the company argues that Mystra AI could help reduce risk, improve success rates and support the development of safer, more effective medicines.

According to Genomics, drug targets with human genetic support are 2.6 times more likely to succeed in clinical trials.

A New Platform for Genomic Intelligence

Mystra AI is built on Genomics’ human genotype and phenotype database, which the company says is the largest and most diverse of its kind globally.

Its Foundational Data Collection includes more than 45,000 genome wide association studies and trillions of rows of data. Over the past decade, Genomics says it has used this platform to identify more than 100 drug targets across diseases including cancer, heart disease and diabetes.

The platform is designed to make complex genetic analysis accessible through a conversational chat interface. Scientists can ask questions in plain language, without needing specialist analytical expertise, and receive answers grounded in data from the Mystra platform.

Genomics says every answer is supported by evidence, visuals and proprietary analytical tools, giving users transparency over how the platform has reached its conclusions. The aim is to make outputs reproducible, verifiable and useful in day-to-day scientific workflows.

Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Genomics, Professor Sir Peter Donnelly said the platform would allow scientists working across research and development, as well as business development and licensing, to harness genetics more easily when identifying new targets, assessing acquisition opportunities or expanding existing medicines into new indications.

He said the result could be “safer, more effective treatments for patients, faster”, describing the launch as “the start of a new era of genomic intelligence”.

President at Genomics, David Thornton said the company had built the largest human genetics dataset to deepen understanding of human biology and disease. By integrating that catalogue of human association data into an advanced AI platform, he said Genomics was giving scientists the tools and information needed to discover the next generation of treatments.

From Oxford TechBio Spin Out to Transatlantic Life Sciences Scale Up

The launch of Mystra AI also builds on Genomics’ wider position as one of the UK’s most closely watched life sciences scale ups.

Founded as an Oxford spin out in 2014 by leading statistical and human geneticists, the company has grown into a transatlantic TechBio business with teams across the UK and the United States. Its model combines large scale genetic and health data with advanced analytics to support both drug discovery and predictive, preventative healthcare.

Earlier this year, Genomics opened its flagship London office in the Knowledge Quarter, underlining its growth as a UK science led company with international ambitions. At the opening, the UK Government described companies like Genomics as among the “jewels in our crown”, placing the company within a wider national ambition to make life sciences both a healthcare and growth priority.

That wider context matters. The UK has long held major strengths in genomics, artificial intelligence, NHS data, academic research and life sciences. The question for policymakers is how those strengths can be translated into commercial scale, new medicines, better prevention and improved outcomes for patients.

Mystra AI is one example of how that agenda is beginning to take shape.

Linking Drug Discovery and Prevention

Although Mystra AI is focused on drug discovery and target validation, it sits within a broader shift in healthcare and life sciences: the adoption of novel innovation to help people live longer healthier lives. In healthcare, this wave of adapting for the future has been focused on the move towards earlier intervention, prediction and prevention.

Genomics’ work spans both life sciences and healthcare. Alongside its drug discovery platform, the company has developed tools using polygenic risk scores to identify an individual’s risk of developing common diseases before symptoms appear.

This connects the launch of Mystra AI to a wider policy debate about the future of healthcare and adoption of innovation in the UK. The NHS is under pressure from rising demand, long term conditions and constrained resources. Better use of genomics and predictive analytics across life sciences and healthcare could help identify new treatments, as well as patients at higher risk, direct people into the right screening or prevention programmes, and support a more personalised approach to care.

In its earlier work, Genomics has argued that the UK is already a global leader in genetics and genomics. The challenge in healthcare now is not just scientific discovery, but scale. That means ensuring that new tools reach patients, support clinicians, strengthen UK industry and help the NHS move from reactive treatment towards more proactive, preventative care.

Industry Adoption

Genomics says Mystra AI has already been adopted by pharmaceutical and biotech organisations, including BridgeBio Pharma and Relation Therapeutics.

Xue Zeng, Associate Director, Statistical Genetics at BridgeBio Pharma, said the platform was making it easier and more efficient to mine genomics data, accelerating day to day workflows.

Chief Executive Officer at Relation Therapeutics, David Roblin said the company was proud to be an early adopter of Mystra AI, adding that the platform had helped its research teams explore and evaluate biological insights at pace.

The platform has also received backing from wider industry leaders. Chief Medical Officer at Amazon Web Services, Rowland Illing said Genomics had developed a platform that could change how diseases and targets are identified for the next generation of drug discovery.

Chief Executive Officer at the BioIndustry Association, Professor Chris Molloy said the release and rapid adoption of Mystra AI demonstrated the UK’s ability to harness genomic data for the benefit of patients and the economy. He said the platform showed the breadth of the UK life sciences community and its ability to discover new medicines at world class pace and scale.

A Test of UK Life Sciences Ambition

For policymakers, the launch of Mystra AI highlights a broader opportunity facing the UK economy.

Britain has world class research institutions, valuable health data assets, leading genomics capability and a growing artificial intelligence sector. But turning those strengths into globally competitive companies, new treatments and better patient outcomes requires more than scientific excellence.

It requires investment, commercial ambition, regulatory clarity, trusted data use and stronger connections between the NHS, industry, academia and government.

Genomics’ growth story – across its life sciences and healthcare divisions – reflects that wider opportunity. The company says its platform can be accessed through different engagement models, including direct software access, partly managed projects combining client data with Genomics’ datasets, and fully managed collaborations with its team of statistical genetics scientists.

That flexibility is designed to support pharmaceutical and biotech partners at different stages of the research process, from early target discovery to deeper analysis of proprietary datasets.

As pressure grows to develop safer and more effective medicines, platforms such as Mystra AI suggest that the next phase of drug discovery may be shaped not only by laboratory science, but by the ability to interpret complex biological data at speed and scale.

For the UK, the opportunity is clear. If companies such as Genomics can turn national strengths in genomics, artificial intelligence and life sciences into practical tools used by global pharma and the NHS, the benefits could be felt in new medicines, better prevention, high value jobs and long-term economic growth.

The challenge now is ensuring that promise is matched by scale.

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Photo Credit: Genomics Ltd

Linden Kemkaran

Leader of Kent County Council

With Reform and the Greens riding high in the polls, local government is faced with an influx of new councillors with little experience of power. In this article, Linden Kemkaran, Leader of Kent County Council, sets out what she thinks local government really needs from central government, the leadership lessons she has learned from the front line, and why Kent chose to raise council tax in its latest budget.

Leading a county council in today’s environment is not a theoretical exercise. It is not an abstract debate about governance models or fiscal frameworks. It is a daily test of judgment, responsibility, and leadership under sustained pressure.

For more than a decade, local government has been told to “do more with less”. At first, this was framed as a challenge to innovate. Over time, it became an expectation. Today, it has hardened into an assumption that councils can absorb rising demand indefinitely through efficiency alone.

Kent County Council is one of the largest local authorities in the country. We deliver services to more than 1.6 million residents, many of them statutory, many of them demand-led, and almost all of them under growing strain. Like other councils across England, we are dealing with rising costs in adult social care, children’s services, special educational needs, and temporary accommodation, while operating within a funding system that remains short-term, uncertain, and increasingly disconnected from reality.

Linden Kemkaran: Efficiency Has Limits

Efficiency has limits. Resilience has limits. And pretending otherwise does not protect public services, it quietly erodes them.

Local government does not need sympathy from Westminster. It needs honesty, trust, and reform.

One of the clearest lessons I have learned since becoming Leader is that the pressures facing councils are no longer cyclical. They are structural. Demand is rising faster than funding, and councils are too often left to absorb national policy decisions without the resources, flexibility, or timescales required to implement them properly. Announcements are made centrally, expectations are set publicly, and delivery is quietly delegated to local authorities already operating at the limits of resilience.

The uncomfortable truth is that the gap between responsibility and resource has widened year after year.

This is not a sustainable model.

Unsustainable

What local government needs from Westminster is not more initiatives, but a different relationship. Multi-year funding settlements would allow councils to plan responsibly rather than react defensively. Greater flexibility would enable local leaders to design services around local need rather than national prescription. Most importantly, there must be recognition that councils are delivery partners, not administrative outposts.

Leadership at local level matters more than ever, precisely because the margins are so tight. There is no room for complacency or delay. Decisions that might once have been deferred must now be confronted directly. That requires political courage, strong working relationships with officers, and a willingness to be honest with residents about the challenges we face.

In Kent, my focus has been on restoring grip and realism. That means understanding where pressures genuinely sit, challenging assumptions, and acting early rather than allowing risks to compound. It also means recognising that leadership is not about choosing the most politically convenient option, but the most responsible one.

That approach was tested most visibly during this year’s budget.

When we took office, plans were already in place for a 4.99 per cent council tax increase. That option was available to us. It would have been easy to accept it as inevitable, particularly given the scale of financial pressure councils are under. Many would have argued that taking the maximum allowed rise was the safest course.

We chose a different path.

We concluded that a 3.99 per cent increase was the correct course. That decision required discipline. It required confidence in our grip on the budget and a willingness to be held accountable for the choice we made.

This was not an attempt to minimise the seriousness of the council’s financial position, nor to pretend that pressures can be wished away. It was a conscious decision to demonstrate restraint, to recognise the cost pressures households are already facing and to show that local government can exercise judgment rather than default to the maximum permitted rise.

Social Responsibility

Leadership is often revealed in small but significant choices. In this case, it meant sending a clear signal that we would not automatically reach for the highest available option simply because it existed. It meant proving that financial discipline and social responsibility are not mutually exclusive.

The reality is that councils like Kent will continue to face profound challenges in the years ahead. But local government is not broken. What is broken is the framework within which it is expected to operate.

With the right support from Westminster, councils can be financially responsible, operationally innovative, and genuinely responsive to the communities they serve. Without it, even the best leadership will be forced into managing decline rather than delivering progress.

The choice facing central government is straightforward. Treat local government as a trusted partner in national renewal, or continue with a system that stores up risk and pushes difficult decisions further down the line.

From where I sit, leadership under pressure has taught me one thing above all else: local government does not lack capability or commitment. What it lacks is a system that matches the scale of the responsibility it carries.

This article features in the new edition of ChamberUK. Our parliamentary journal.

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Photo Credit: Linden Kemkaran

Sokratis Papafloratos

Founder & CEO, Numan

This article is a sponsored feature, produced in partnership with Numan.

Arguing from the frontline of digital healthcare, Numan founder and CEO Sokratis Papafloratos makes the case that only an Open Banking-style, patient-controlled data framework can unlock the full potential of artificial intelligence in healthcare.

The UK aspires to be a global life sciences superpower. This is one of the pillars of the government’s Industrial Strategy, and for good reason. Few sectors offer such a powerful combination of economic growth and direct public good. Digital healthcare has the power to be a huge part of that, yet there is a growing tension at the heart of this ambition. We are building a 21^st-century digital health system on 20^th-century data infrastructure.

Healthcare in the UK is rapidly digitising. Patients move seamlessly between NHS services, private providers, and digital platforms, generating clinically valuable data at every stop. At the same time, artificial intelligence is no longer a future prospect in healthcare, it is already reshaping how patients seek care, how clinicians work, and how services are delivered.

More patients booked GP appointments online than over the phone in the past year for the first time, over 39 million patients are now registered on the NHS App, and many patients are increasingly turning to AI tools to interpret symptoms, understand test results or decide whether to seek care. Clinicians and providers are successfully beginning to implement AI to triage demand, reduce administrative burden and personalise treatment.

Artificial intelligence in healthcare is advancing quickly – often faster than policy and regulation can adapt – but the data foundations are not

The fact is that health data remains fragmented across NHS services, private providers, and digital platforms. And the result is duplication, delay, and missed opportunity – creating a gap is becoming a serious constraint on both care quality and the UK’s life sciences ambitions.

The debate is often framed around whether health data should be shared. That is the wrong question. Data already flows – just imperfectly, inconsistently, and without clear accountability. The real issue is who controls access, under what conditions, and with what safeguards.

We Have Seen This Issue Play Out Before in an Unlikely Place: Banking

Before Open Banking, financial data was locked inside institutions. Consumers had little visibility, limited portability, and no practical way to authorise third-party access. PSD2 and Open Banking changed that, establishing clear rules for consent, interoperability, and liability.

Specifically, a particularly powerful shift came through Account Information Services (AIS), which enabled authorised third parties to access aggregated financial data with explicit, time-limited user consent. Customers could grant read-only, purpose-specific access to their information, improving coordination and insight without increasing execution risk.

The Principles are Highly Transferable to Healthcare

Health data governance still assumes patients receive care within a single system, from a single provider, anchored to one institutional record of truth. That assumption no longer holds. Patients move between NHS services, private providers, and digital platforms. Each interaction generates clinically valuable data, yet too often, that information cannot be securely shared back into the wider system.

This matters not only for patient care, but for the UK’s competitiveness – particularly in life sciences.

For example, AI thrives on high-quality, interoperable data. But for this technology to deliver on its promise of earlier diagnosis, more personalised care, and better prevention, it needs access to accurate, up-to-date, and connected patient data. Today, this does not exist, and it creates a paradox. The UK cannot credibly aim to lead in AI-enabled life sciences while its data architecture limits what AI can safely and effectively do.

Innovation cannot exist in a vacuum – it depends on regulatory clarity. In England alone, responsibility for AI in healthcare is spread across multiple regulators and oversight bodies. For responsible innovators, navigating this landscape can be slow, fragmented, and unclear. That is not conducive to growth in a globally competitive life sciences market.

An Open Banking-style Approach to Health Data Would Address Both Problems

A consent-led, patient-centred national framework – allowing individuals to authorise specific providers to access defined parts of their record for clear clinical purposes – would create the conditions for digital healthcare and AI to flourish.

Access could be time-bound, purpose-specific, and revocable, supported by transparent audit trails and clear liability structures. Accredited private providers and NHS services could securely share information, improving coordination rather than entrenching silos. Patients would gain meaningful control, while clinicians would gain the visibility required for safe, effective care.

Trust will be critical. In banking, consumer confidence did not emerge from good intentions. It emerged from clear rules, defined liability, and visible enforcement. Health would benefit from a similarly clear framework. Likewise, patients trust systems when they understand who is responsible for what, and when regulators visibly uphold those standards. Clear governance would not slow innovation, it would accelerate it.

Digital healthcare is now a permanent feature of the UK health landscape. The genie cannot be forced back into the bottle. This is why the digital health conversation in 2026 needs to ask the question: are the data foundations beneath the entire UK ecosystem fit for purpose? 

The Solution

For the UK’s life sciences strategy to succeed, it must address the data foundations beneath our national and digital health ecosystem. AI can make healthcare more proactive, personalised, and resilient, but only if regulation evolves at pace and patients are given control of their own data.

The choice is clear. We can continue with a fragmented system that is seemingly digital in form but analogue in function, or we can build a modern, interoperable, patient-centred data framework that underpins both better care and sustainable growth.

If we get this right, we will not just modernise healthcare and improve patient outcomes. We will strengthen one of the pillars of the UK’s Industrial Strategy and cement our place as a global leader in life sciences innovation.

This article features in the new edition of ChamberUK. Our parliamentary journal.

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Photo Credit: Numan

Umang Patel

Chief Clinical Information Officer – Microsoft

This article sets out how technology, when embedded within the right system design, can move the NHS from pilots to delivery by creating capacity, improving productivity, and enabling the ambitions of the NHS Plan to be realised at national scale.

There are roughly five barbers or hairdressers for every NHS surgeon today. With waiting lists at historic highs, a far-fetched solution might be to borrow from medieval Britain and see whether any high street snippers are available for minor procedures.

That is, after all, where surgery began. Barbers were the first surgeons. They had sharp tools, steady hands, proximity to the public, and a willingness to help. What followed was not simply better instruments, but the creation of training, standards, sterile technique, governance, and dedicated environments for care. Systems, not tools alone, made surgery safe, trusted, and scalable.

That lesson matters now. In healthcare, new capability delivers impact only when embedded in the right operating model. Today, we have powerful digital and AI tools, but we are still too often treating them as pilots rather than infrastructure.

From Policy Direction to Market Creation

Over the past decade, national policy has established that digital health works. We have commissioned pilots, evaluations, and frameworks. This has been necessary. It has also reached its limit.

The centre of gravity must now shift from setting direction to creating markets.

Market creation means defining what good looks like nationally, validating it once, and scaling it many times. It means using national levers such as procurement, standards, assurance, and payment to ensure suppliers build for NHS realities, and that trusts are not forced to repeat the same evaluation hundreds of times.

In practical terms, when a redesigned digital pathway for a high-volume service is clinically assured, shown to be safe, and demonstrated to release capacity, it should become a reusable national building block rather than a bespoke local experiment. This is the difference between approving a product and commissioning a pathway. Approving a product confirms that a tool is safe and effective. Commissioning a pathway confirms that care can be delivered differently, at scale, and with technology embedded as infrastructure rather than added on at the margins. A market is created through pathway commissioning and orchestration.

The ambitions set out in the 10 Year Health Plan for England – moving care from hospital to community, from analogue to digital, and from sickness to prevention – are not abstract goals. They are delivery challenges. Technology is the lever. Market creation is the mechanism.

NHS Productivity: The Scale of the Opportunity

A simple worked example illustrates the difference. In a standard dermatology pathway, patients are referred, wait for an outpatient appointment, attend face to face clinics and are then reassured, treated or referred on. In redesigned digital first pathways, structured history and images are submitted upfront and triaged asynchronously, and only a minority require in-person review. Early deployments show that more than half of referrals can be resolved without a clinic appointment, reducing waiting times and freeing specialist capacity.

The scale of the prize is significant. In 2024 and 2025, there were 146.1 million outpatient appointments in England, with 8.1 million recorded as did not attends. Even small percentage improvements in pathway design would release capacity equivalent to entire hospital departments.

Virtual wards demonstrate what this kind of redesign can achieve. By late 2023, more than 240,000 patients had been treated at home, with over 10,000 virtual ward beds established, with evaluation suggesting one non-elective admission avoided for roughly every 2.5 virtual ward admissions on average.

AI as a Productivity Multiplier

AI adoption is not optional if we are serious about delivery. It is central to the economic case for reform, as productivity growth in healthcare is now essential to maintaining fiscal sustainability while demand continues to rise.

At the same time, AI has clear limitations that must be acknowledged explicitly. AI systems can hallucinate, can lack clinical judgment, and cannot be relied upon to diagnose or make final clinical decisions. Treating them as digital clinicians would be unsafe and would undermine public trust.

The opportunity lies elsewhere. AI can be used to perform structured administrative and preparatory work that is currently consuming scarce clinical time. For example, AI can guide patients through clinically relevant questions, collect structured histories, prompt the submission of relevant images or observations and organise this information for clinician review. In this model, the clinical content remains human, while the administrative burden is automated.

This approach aligns capability with accountability. Clinicians retain decision-making responsibility, while AI operates as a force multiplier that improves information quality, reduces friction and allows expertise to be applied where it adds the most value.

A recent national pilot reported average time savings of 43 minutes per person per day from AI co-piloting tools. At NHS scale, this equates to millions of hours returned to care.

This matters because productivity remains below pre-pandemic levels while fiscal constraints tighten. Without sustained productivity improvement, healthcare spending growth will increasingly crowd out other public priorities, limiting both service quality and wider economic resilience.

AI is not about replacing clinicians. It is about multiplying them, allowing scarce expertise to be applied where it adds the greatest value and reducing time lost to low-value administrative work.

National Infrastructure, Not Shadow IT

Public trust is critical. AI must operate under clear human oversight, with auditability, clinical accountability, and equity guardrails designed in from the outset. Market creation should reinforce these principles, ensuring that innovation strengthens trust rather than eroding it, and that benefits are distributed fairly across populations.

The UK is unusually well-positioned to lead. We have national evidence standards, assurance frameworks, statutory clinical safety requirements, and increasing regulatory coordination. Few health systems combine this scale, public trust, and institutional capability.

Market creation should make the safe option the easy option. Validate once, reuse assurance, align payment with redesigned pathways and scale what works.

This approach reduces risk, lowers transaction costs and accelerates adoption. It also creates operating models that are replicable nationally and credible internationally.

Payment, Productivity, and Value

Current payment mechanisms still largely reward activity rather than outcomes. AI enables outcomes to be measured at scale through remote monitoring, pathway analytics, patient-reported outcomes, and equity tracking.

These capabilities provide the foundation for genuine value-based care. Blended payment models can support redesigned pathways rather than historic clinic templates, making productivity gains structural rather than episodic, while reducing unwarranted variation and protecting safety.

From Local Delivery to National Scale and Export

Delivery must begin locally, focusing on a single high-volume pathway, with assurance applied upfront and clear measures such as reduced waiting times, avoided appointments, and staff time released.

Those successes then become national reference points. Specifications, safety requirements, and procurement routes can be standardised and reused, with operating models that are credible internationally and exportable beyond the UK.

Show. Do. Scale.

The tools are no longer the constraint. The question is whether we are willing to design the systems, including procurement, assurance, payment, and accountability, that allow them to be deployed safely and at pace.

If we do, we will not only improve care for patients in the UK. We will demonstrate that large-scale healthcare transformation is possible, affordable, and repeatable.

History shows that when capability is matched with system design, transformation follows. The opportunity is clear: move from intent to execution, and from planning constrained by workforce and physical capacity to deliberately designing in digital capacity.

This article features in the new edition of ChamberUK. Our parliamentary journal.

You can buy your copy here.

Photo Credit: St Thomas Hospital altered with ChatGPT.

Miles Bennington

Editor – Chamber UK

The first report of Alan Milburn’s independent review into young people and work established by the Government will be released today as UK unemployment has hit 5% and the number of NEETs (young people not in education, employment or training) hits over a million according to the ONS.

Today’s 200 page report will set out the problems faced by young people, with a further report later this year setting out recommendations to Government as to how to alleviate the NEET problem. It comes as a painful reminder that as Labour contemplate ditching Keir Starmer as Prime Minister, his administration is only just getting to grips with some problems, two years after their landslide victory.

NEETs Problem

As the ONS has today announced. There are now over a million young people not in education, employment or training. This represents a steady rise since 2021 and is higher as a percentage of young people than anytime since before the pandemic.

Combined with unemployment hitting 5% in between January and March, it signals a weakness in the labour market which is worrying the Government. For context unemployment last exceeded 5% at the height of COVID and exceeded 8% in the aftermath of the financial crash in 2011.

During this morning’s press conference. Milburn stated that the NEET problem has been decades in the making. Citing declines over the last decade in low and medium skilled jobs, Saturday jobs, roles in hospitality, apprenticeship starts and entry level jobs he paints a bleak picture for young people looking for work. All this before any impact from the “AI revolution” is felt.

Alan Milburn’s Potential Recommendations

Speaking on a media round today, Milburn suggested that some historic Labour policies may be on the chopping block in his recommendations coming later this year.

On the Today Programme, when asked if he would ask the Government to “think again” on the rise in employer national insurance and the increase of the minimum wage, he said: “Yes, I am … Every employer that I talk to, they will say the same thing. There’s no doubt that the changes that were made a couple of years ago have had an impact on employers.”

On Times Radio he said: “Well, certainly every employer that we spoke to raised these issues as real concerns, the minimum wage. No employer really wants to be paying poverty wages to young people, that’s not what you come across.”

During his press conference, he cited mental health issues as a new and growing issue among NEETs but dismissed that these claims were false. He praised young people’s effort but cites the vicious cycle of a lack of demand for entry level roles leading to long term unemployment. Hinting at the need for cross government reforms he cited failures in schools, the NHS and the welfare system all spending more money dealing with the NEET problem than on preventing it.

Final Thoughts

Listening to an articulate, coherent diagnosis of a serious problem in the UK labour market, one can’t help but wonder why Labour did not arrive in Government with this diagnosis to hand and remedies ready to implement. Milburn’s deliver also harks back to the hyper competent media training of the Blair era. Careful to acknowledge the concerns and counter arguments of voters but confident in his narrative; Milburn’s performance is a stark contrast to the Starmer era’s muddled missions and milestones, timid delivery and cack-handed comms.  

As Westminster holds it’s breath, for June 18^th and the potential end of the Starmer era, Labour may take on Milburn’s recommendations, but they must take on his competence.

Miles is the Editor of ChamberUK. Our parliamentary journal.

You can buy your copy here.

• Photo Credit:
  • Alan Milburn: UK Government
  • Number 10: RachelH_
  • Job Centre sign: Sunolafjagtenben-hur
  • Image Composition: ChatGPT

Helen Dent

CEO of British In Vitro Diagnostics Association (BIVDA)

Despite alignment across government, industry, and the NHS under the 10 Year and Life Sciences Sector Plans, innovation is failing to scale because capital is not reallocated to fund adoption, and only a shift from revenue to capital funding will unlock system-wide implementation, growth, and better patient outcomes.

Across the UK, particularly now in the year after the launch of both the 10 Year and Life Science Sector plans, there is energetic agreement across the system that change can happen. Experts across industry, the NHS, and government have aligned and determined what needs to happen. The challenge is that the people who know what needs to happen are not the people who need to make it happen.

It is obvious to us all. We have watched, participated and sometimes navigated around problems, and everyone involved can provide examples of issues, both evidenced and anecdotal, but the frustration is that they are theoretically able to be overcome.

NHS Procurement: The System Isn’t Broken, It’s Disconnected

The problem is the system itself. It’s not a single system; individual elements perform very well, and the quality of each part of the system is world leading – just as we aim to be. The problem is that the system is not a high-functioning team. There is no handover of the baton and no momentum to deliver.

The NHS is running a relay but not passing the baton on to the next leg. No one takes responsibility for a successful changeover, and we end up with different parts of the system tripping each other up and dropping the baton.

How can a government-funded innovation that has been developed based on system need reach market readiness through every part of the process, at significant cost, and not be implemented across the system that said it needed it?

How can innovation funds make this ready, yet people in the trusts are able to decide it isn’t innovative enough?

How do products reach this stage and then be overlooked because they’re not proven, or because it’s cheaper not to change and to continue to do what is already being done?

When Innovation Funding Leads Nowhere

The funding needs to follow the products if innovation is to be adopted. The technology or process that is being replaced should be de-funded and those funds should be mandated to support the implementation of the replacement technology.

It shouldn’t be up to the individual hospitals or trusts to find new money for products that come through innovation funding. This means that government funds are being wasted. Development money will get no return on investment, and increasing innovation funds is pointless if the funds for using these products are not provided.

To be clear, this isn’t about increasing money flowing into the system. This is about a systemic process that reallocates funds to products that are meeting the needs of the patients.

Capital, Contracts, and the Cost of Delay

This needs a system restructure. Currently, NHS contracts in high technology are often too long in order to spread setup costs over time. They need to be shorter to encourage new entrants and me-too products. To address this, capital funding should be available, as long contracts are not cheaper for the NHS. When cost of capital is applied, the NHS pays up to 30 per cent more for equipment. It’s simple financing; the monthly payment might be lower to manage revenue budgets, but the cost overall is higher. If an amount of capital were available to support innovation entry, there would be the potential to reduce overall costs by around a third.

This would support innovation by allowing for more frequent replacement cycles, thereby reducing the need to cover capital costs through revenue over extended contract periods. In turn, that would allow the NHS to respond to technical developments, and ensure that industry is supported by de-risking the market and attracting international investment.

Outcomes would improve for the NHS, and the UK could reap the benefits of a thriving life sciences sector, as set out in the Industrial Strategy and Life Sciences Sector Plan, enabling growth, investment, and R&D opportunities for companies to set up, scale and grow.

Capital availability for new technology would make procurement more agile and cost-effective, as Trusts would not be locked into long contracts. This would create better opportunities for SMEs, who are unable to finance long term contracts through their own financing and investment. Currently, it’s often too risky to secure inward investment.

Unlocking Growth for SMEs and the UK Economy

There would be less concern over fruitless payments or stopping the use of technology that is still not fully paid for, because the asset would be owned outright. Equipment could be resold on the second-hand market (within regulations), creating opportunities for cost savings through future tenders.

Capital funding would mean that products could be procured, used and replaced in sensible replacement cycles, encouraging returns for investors and resulting in product improvements for patients, increased competition, and a market sector for large and small companies. This would result in cash releasing savings for the NHS because regular competition cycles encourage this.

This wouldn’t require a complete overhaul of process, as some technology areas are slower in innovation and stable, but enabling new technology through capital would simply open up the market entry and allow new technology to scale.

Cash Not Credit: a Simple Structural Fix

The capital funds into SMEs is gold dust and secures their futures, their capital, and their ability to invest in the UK for employment and skills, and also secures further investment to make the UK attractive for multi-nationals as a global destination for product launches, with a good headwind. The UK could attract more manufacturing as there would be a return within acceptable timescales and the risk would be mitigated.

Capital instead of revenue isn’t more money. It’s the same GDP used differently, and such an easy fix to bring technology, innovation, and investment to the UK.

It could be argued that making market entry easier for innovation through capital would also reduce the noise of other reasons for lack of adoption.

Is there really an issue with regulation? Is there really a problem with NICE? Is there really a stuffy procurement regime?

Or is it just that good products and good companies don’t get bought by the system because the system is too full of long-term commitments and processes that are introduced to make the monthly costs affordable? Making capital funds available for innovation addresses several actions – both micro and macro – in the 10 Year and Life Science Sector plans, and it doesn’t cost any more than currently, yet has so many benefits for patients, companies, UK growth, international attractiveness, inward investment, and skills and competition. Cash instead of credit for innovation is an easy enabler to kick-start our economy and achieve several elements of our health plans.

This article features in the new edition of ChamberUK. Our parliamentary journal.

You can buy your copy here.

Lawrence Tallon

Chief Executive of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA)

At the UKAI and Curia annual Healthcare and Life Sciences Parliamentary Showcase, Chief Executive of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), Lawrence Tallon set out a clear message to Parliament, AI Healthcare Companies, academia and the NHS – regulation should not be seen as a barrier to innovation, but as one of the conditions that enables it.

Speaking as keynote speaker at the event, Tallon argued that the UK has the scientific, technological, and biomedical strengths needed to improve patient care, and drive economic growth. However, he warned that those strengths will only translate into better outcomes if proven innovation can reach clinicians and patients more quickly.

For Tallon, he clearly articulated that the UK can innovate effectively from a world-leading position. What he questioned is whether the system can adopt innovation at scale.

AI Healthcare Companies: Regulation and innovation should not be opposites

Tallon opened by challenging the idea that regulation and innovation naturally sit in tension. He said that while the two words are “not always” heard in the same sentence, he believes regulation can be a catalyst for innovation.

Drawing on his own experience in public service innovation before joining the MHRA, he pointed to his work as Deputy Chief Executive at Guys and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust on the first medical use case of drone technology in the UK. That example, he suggested, shows that public services can use new technology both to improve delivery and support wider economic growth.

If the UK wants to improve healthcare outcomes and grow its life sciences, medtech and artificial intelligence (AI) sectors, it needs regulation that gives innovators a clear, trusted and proportionate route to market.

The current AI pathway is not enough for the next generation of tools

Tallon acknowledged that there is already an established regulatory route for AI in healthcare. However, he said this has largely been designed around the dominant AI use case of recent years – image recognition, particularly in radiology.

In that context, AI systems are often assessed on whether they can read scans as well as, or better than, humans. But Tallon warned that the new era of AI will involve far more complex products, including large language models and large medical language models, with a much wider range of possible clinical and operational applications.

That shift, he argued, demands a regulatory framework that is fit for the next generation of AI, rather than one built only around earlier use cases.

“We must weigh the risk of inaction just as much as the risk of action.”

A national process for building trust

Tallon highlighted the Government’s National Commission on the Regulation of AI in Healthcare, which is bringing together around 100 experts from big tech, small tech, government, frontline clinicians, academics, patients and patient representatives.

He said the Commission has already received 700 responses to its call for evidence and held 20 events across the country to hear directly from patients and citizens about what they want from AI, and what concerns them.

That engagement matters because trust will be central to whether AI can be adopted safely and confidently across the NHS. For Tallon, the answer to complex and adaptive technologies is not to regulate behind closed doors, but to build an expert, authoritative and inclusive process.

The risk of inaction must count too

One of Tallon’s strongest messages was that regulators must consider not only the risk of approving a product, but also the risk of failing to make useful tools available.

He said it is easy for a regulator to ask what might happen if a product is approved and something goes wrong. But he said regulators must also think about clinicians and patients who could benefit from technologies that are already proven to be better than current practice.

Where AI is “good enough” and demonstrably better than what is currently available, Tallon argued that the system should be more ambitious and more permissive in making those tools available to clinicians and patients.

From a high jump to a hurdles race

Tallon’s second key message was that AI requires a fundamentally different regulatory model from traditional medicines regulation.

Medicines regulation has historically involved a very high barrier before a product reaches patients. But AI, he argued, is different. Because it is complex, adaptive and capable of changing over time, the regulatory system should place greater emphasis on post-market monitoring, real-world evidence and iterative assessment.

He compared this approach to a hurdles race rather than a high jump: not one almost impossibly high barrier to entry, but a series of proportionate steps that allow products to reach patients more quickly while continuing to monitor performance in real-world NHS settings.

The five Pros of AI regulation

Tallon’s final key message was that AI products are context-specific. Regulators cannot only look at the device itself; they also need to consider the system in which it is used.

He set out the MHRA’s five Pros model: the product, the producer, the provider, the professional and proportionality.

“Think less about a high jump and more about a hurdles race.”

The product must be safe and perform as expected. The producer must behave ethically, report safety signals and maintain the model after deployment. The provider must understand how to use AI in clinical workflows, manage bias and understand error. The professional must understand the intended effect of the algorithm in the same way a clinician understands the intended effect of a medicine. Finally, the overall system must be proportionate to risk.

A more ambitious route to adoption

Tallon concluded that the UK has an opportunity to design an optimal model for regulating AI in healthcare, with the Commission’s initial report due to be published soon with the final report coming later in the year.

His central message was that smarter regulation can help the UK get proven technology to patients and clinicians more quickly, while maintaining safety, trust and proportionality.

For a health system under pressure, and a life sciences sector with major growth potential, that balance could be crucial.

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Photo Credit: The wub with ChatGPT overlay

Sandy Martin

Chair of Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform

With long time supporter of electoral reform, Andy Burnham, facing a by-election in Makerfield, it is a good time to review the arguments for using Proportional Representation for elections to the House of Commons. In this article Chair of the Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform and former MP, Sandy Martin, argues that it’s time for Labour to commit to electoral reform.

In March 2020, standing for Leader of the Labour Party, Keir Starmer said “We’ve got to address the fact that millions of people vote in safe seats and they feel their voice doesn’t count.  That’s got to be addressed by electoral reform.  We will never get full participation in our electoral system until we do that at every level.”

In July 2024, Keir Starmer led a victorious Labour Party into government with one of the largest majorities in the history of British representative democracy.  The fact that that majority was based on just 34% of the votes cast does not alter the overwhelming power the new government had to make fundamental changes to the way this country is governed.  Those changes have not been made.

What’s the Problem?

Democracy does not just depend on giving people the vote.  It also requires them to have reliable sources of information, some basic understanding of what their vote can do, and a system which translates their vote into actual influence.  The Representation of the People Bill currently making its way through Parliament addresses some of the problems with our democracy, but the remedies proposed are mostly to side-issues, or are inadequate to deal with the problem.  There are three areas that need attention – the voting system, the funding of political parties, and the prevalence of misinformation, especially via social media.

The UK has suffered for a hundred years from a binary politics which does not allow for representation of a diversity of views.  Since 1945, that has mainly played out as Conservative governments elected on less than half the votes, interspersed with Labour governments that have “triangulated” to the right in order to get elected.

Since the demise of the Attlee government it has been obvious that the majority of the mainstream press have doggedly opposed left-wing policies.  Now the spreading of deliberate falsehoods through social media platforms has become an entrenched part of our politics, having a profound effect on, for instance, the Brexit referendum. 

And the disparity in financial resources between the two big parties over the past seventy years has been used to persuade the majority to vote against their own best interests for the majority of the time.

The stakes now are far higher.  With five parties in contention in England, and six in Wales and Scotland, it would only take 29 or 30% of the vote to achieve an overall majority in the House of Commons.  And with millions of pounds being shovelled into Farage’s coffers by multinational billionaires and crypto-gamblers, and huge influence being wielded through X and Facebook, the possibility of an extreme right-wing populist government in the UK is all too apparent.

Proportional Representation: What’s to be Done?

The government still has three years.  It must urgently reform the financing of political parties, and put serious restrictions on the spread of disinformation through social media.  Above all, it must find a way to prevent the minority of British voters who have been taken in by Reform UK from handing power to a financial libertarian with views that most people find offensive, who will most likely – as Trump is doing – deliberately erode the safeguards that our democracy still possesses.  Nobody should be able to wield untrammelled power on less than a third of the votes. A proportional electoral system will prevent that from happening, as it has done in Wales.

Do we need a new Prime Minister?  If Starmer were able and willing to fulfil the promises he made in the spring of 2020 then I think the answer is “no”.  But he has shown no inclination to do so.  Can we rely on any of the promises that other candidates are now making?  Again, the answer is possibly “no” – but that is not a good reason not to give them a chance.  Cynicism in politics is a recipe for despair. 

So What Hope is There? Labour Leadership Change?

Any new Leader would be working with a Party, and a set of MPs, who have made it very clear that they support constitutional change.  80% of party members and four of the five big affiliated trade unions support electoral reform.  The All-Party Parliamentary Group for Fair Elections is the largest in Parliament, and most of its members are Labour MPs. A fresh Prime Minister who has spent the last five years campaigning for electoral reform would have the power and the support to make it happen.  This is an idea whose time has truly come.

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Photo Credit: Office of the Mayor of Greater Manchester