Tech Secretary to cut red tape to make new technology available more quickly
Technology Secretary Peter Kyle has said he will cut red tape so that technology like medical delivery drones can be made available more quickly.
He told a tech conference that the Government would prioritise pro-innovation regulation in a dedicated plan for the sector, saying there is 'no route to long-term growth and no solution to our productivity problem, without innovation'.
A trial of medical drones to deliver blood samples in London could be derailed by a single noise complaint, and this is the kind of red tape that will be peeled away so technologies can be brought to market quickly, he said.
It comes as former Conservative minister Lord David Willetts was confirmed as the first head of the new Regulatory Innovation Office (RIO), a role in which he will be tasked with shaping regulatory approaches for new technologies.
The Technology Secretary told the techUK conference: 'Everywhere you see, there is an imbalance of power in this country which has – for too long – made it impossible to imagine a better future for Britain.
'To deliver our Plan for Change we have to shift the balance of power, away from stagnation and old ideas, towards innovation and opportunity, and the bold people building a new future for Britain.
'In doing so, by 2035 we could see a whole new Britain emerge, harnessing the power of technological development, from engineering biology to AI, semiconductors and cyber security, or quantum and future telecoms for a stronger economy and better lives for all in the UK.'
Mr Kyle also announced the 10 winners of Innovate UK's Quantum Missions Pilot, who will receive £12 million between them to help develop quantum computing and networking technologies.
The RIO was launched in October and is intended to reduce the burdens for businesses looking to bring new products and services to the market.
Lord Willetts said he is 'honoured' to take on the role and hailed the 'exciting opportunity to shape regulatory approaches that empower new technologies'.
Among the technologies the body could help make available are delivery drones for medicines and AI training software for surgeons, officials at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology said.
Drones could also be looked at in relation to other industries such as faster delivery of packages or groceries.
Lord Willetts served as the MP for Havant from 1992 to 2015, and was paymaster general for a time under Sir John Major, before returning to the government as universities and science minister in Lord David Cameron's administration.
Mr Kyle said Lord Willetts' experience 'will be key to streamlining innovation and unapologetically unleash the innovation that we know can improve lives'.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
30 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Key questions answered on Sizewell C after Reeves confirms nuclear investment
Chancellor Rachel Reeves has signed off on a £16 billion investment in nuclear power, including funding to build the Sizewell C nuclear power station. It comes ahead of the spending review on Wednesday, where Ms Reeves will outline departmental budgets for the next three years. Here we answer key questions about Sizewell C and the Government's wider nuclear power plans. – What is the Sizewell C nuclear plant? Sizewell C was first proposed 15 years ago on a site by the hamlet Sizewell, which sits on the Suffolk coast between Aldeburgh and Southwold. The area is already home to two separate power stations, the decommissioned Sizewell A nuclear plant and pressurised water reactor Sizewell B. Nuclear power plants use a process called nuclear fission, where atoms split, releasing heat which is then used to generate electricity. – How much funding has the Government announced? The Chancellor said £14.2 billion will be invested to build the Sizewell C plant, marking the end of a long journey to secure funding for the project since it was first earmarked in 2010. At the peak of construction, Sizewell C is expected to provide 10,000 jobs. The company behind the project has already signed £330 million worth of contracts with local businesses. Elsewhere, the Government confirmed one of Europe's first small modular reactor (SMR) programmes, backed by £2.5 billion in taxpayers' money over five years. Ministers announced Rolls-Royce as the winners of a long-running competition on Tuesday for the bid to build the SMR programme. – How could Sizewell C contribute to the UK's future energy system? Sizewell C will power the equivalent of six million homes and is planned to be operation in the 2030s, the Government said. It is also understood that the plant will generate electricity for 60 years. The Treasury said that, combined with the ambition to build SMRs, it would deliver more new nuclear energy to the grid than over the previous half century by the 2030s. It comes as nuclear plants are seen as increasingly important electricity sources as the Government tries to decarbonise Britain's grid by 2030, replacing fossil fuels with green power. The last time Britain completed one was in 1987, which was the Sizewell B plant. Hinkley Point C, in Somerset, is under construction and is expected to produce enough power for about six million homes when it opens, but that may not be until 2031. Sizewell C is part of the Government's wider ambitions to support clean power, such as wind and solar, and decarbonise the country's power grid to tackle the climate crisis and ensure future energy security. – What are small modular reactors? SMRs are a nuclear fission reactor that are a fraction of the size of a traditional nuclear plant. This means they can be built on smaller sites across the country, closer to where the electricity is needed. Still an emerging technology, only China and Russia have successfully built operational SMRs. The Government says the newly-announced UK project could support up to 3,000 new skilled jobs and power the equivalent of around three million homes, with a first site expected to be allocated later this year by state-owned Great British Energy – Nuclear. The hope is eventually attract private investment, especially from tech companies, which might build SMRs to power data centres.– Who has welcomed the Government funding? Trade unions welcomed the move, which the Treasury said would go towards creating 10,000 jobs, including 1,500 apprenticeships. The GMB union said giving Sizewell C the go-ahead was 'momentous'. Regional secretary Warren Kenny said: 'Nuclear power is essential for clean, affordable, and reliable energy – without new nuclear, there can be no net zero. 'Sizewell C will provide thousands of good, skilled, unionised jobs and we look forward to working closely with the Government and Sizewell C to help secure a greener future for this country's energy sector.' Mike Clancy, general secretary of Prospect, said: 'Delivering this funding for Sizewell C is a vital step forward, this project is critical to securing the future of the nuclear industry in the UK. 'New nuclear is essential to achieving net zero, providing a baseload of clean and secure energy, as well as supporting good, unionised jobs. 'Further investment in SMRs and fusion research shows we are finally serious about developing a 21st-century nuclear industry. 'All funding must be backed up by a whole-industry plan to ensure we have the workforce and skills we need for these plans to succeed.' – Who has criticised the plans? Various campaigners oppose the plant and have criticised the decision to commit the funding, saying it is still not clear what the total cost will be. Alison Downes of Stop Sizewell C said ministers had not 'come clean' about the full cost of the project, which the group has previously estimated could be some £40 billion. 'There still appears to be no final investment decision for Sizewell C, but £14.2 billion in taxpayers' funding, a decision we condemn and firmly believe the Government will come to regret. 'Where is the benefit for voters in ploughing more money into Sizewell C that could be spent on other priorities, and when the project will add to consumer bills and is guaranteed to be late and overspent just like Hinkley C? 'Ministers have still not come clean about Sizewell C's cost and, given negotiations with private investors are incomplete, they have signed away all leverage and will be forced to offer generous deals that undermine value for money. Starmer and Reeves have just signed up to HS2 mark 2.' Environmental campaigners have also warned of the impact the plant could have on local wildlife, given Sizewell is surrounded by protected areas. The whole coast is an area of outstanding natural beauty (AONB), the shingle beach is a site of special scientific interest (SSSI) while the nearby Sizewell Marshes and Leiston Sandlings are special protected areas (SPAs) for birds. Many argue that ministers should focus on investing in renewable energy, such as wind farms, instead. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
39 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Starmer and Farage have doomed Britain to a spiral of decline
The Government's decision to U-turn on the winter fuel allowance is absurd – and, sadly, a big indicator that Reform UK is not going to be the party which breaks Britain out of its spiral of self-inflicted decline. Rachel Reeves plans to restore the WFA to all pensioners with an income up to £35,000 a year. It will then be clawed back from the wealthiest retirees via the tax system. Overall, around 7.5 million older people who missed the payment last year are set to receive it again – at an apparent cost in the region of £1.25 billion a year. Paul Johnson, the Chair of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, puts it well: 'It wouldn't even be in the top 100 of things that I would do with my £1.25bn if I wanted to act on poverty. Almost none of the people impacted by this will be in poverty.' He's right. The Government's decision to means test the WFA removed the payment from some ten million people; of these, its own analysis suggested that only 50,000 or so were placed into 'relative fuel poverty'. And remember, 'relative poverty' is merely an income inequality metric; it doesn't mean someone is necessarily unable to afford heating. Even on the face of it, therefore, Reeves is hosing money at 7.5 million people for the sake of lifting just 50,000 out of 'relative' poverty. But closer consideration of the numbers reveals even deeper absurdities. Take the income requirement of £35,000. From the off, that is only a couple of grand less than the national average wage of £37,430. Why should pensioners on that income receive a fuel payment when working-age people on similar incomes do not? If anything, those working-age people are more deserving of help – for their cost of living is often substantially increased by costs from which many pensioners are exempt. How many of those 7.5 million beneficiaries, for example, are living mortgage-free? Retirees are also exempt from National Insurance, and that has big implications for their real income. Without NICs, that £35,000 becomes about £2,500 a month post-tax; for a working person to be in a similar position, they would need to earn quite a bit more than the average wage (enough to be in the top 37 per cent of earners, or thereabouts). Pensioner poverty was a real problem in 2010, when the Coalition Government first introduced the Triple Lock. But whilst there are some struggling pensioners today, it is absurd that the State continues giving indiscriminate welfare to what has become, on average, this country's wealthiest age cohort. Our pathological inability to cut entitlement spending, even to people who obviously don't need it, is one of the main reasons our country is in such a sorry state. We are all but conducting a controlled experiment in how much of the state can be all but dismantled – prisons, courts, the military – in order to avoid touching the big revenue expenditure accounts. Arresting British decline will require breaking out of this cycle. But it's a prisoner's dilemma for politicians: try to do the right thing, as Theresa May did on social care, and it creates an all-too-tempting opening for opportunistic opponents to exploit – as Labour did then, and as Reform UK has done now. Now forced to govern in the long shadow of wildly unrealistic voter expectations, Labour is probably quietly regretting its game-playing over the 'dementia tax'. If Nigel Farage ever becomes prime minister, and is forced to admit the extravagant savings he claims he can get from abolishing DEI and net zero are for the birds, he may well regret killing off such an obvious cut as the winter fuel allowance. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
What are small nuclear reactors and why does the UK want to build them?
Rolls Royce has been selected to develop and build the UK's first small nuclear power stations. It is hoped small modular reactors (SMRs) will help meet the UK's growing electricity demands, be faster to develop than full size reactors and create thousands of skilled jobs. Alongside £2.5bn for these SMRs, the government has also announced £14.2bn to build a new larger scale reactor, Sizewell C in Suffolk. SMRs, sometimes called "mini nukes", work on the same principle as large reactors, using a nuclear reaction to generate heat that produces electricity. Inside one or more large reactor vessels, atoms of nuclear fuel are split, releasing a large amount of heat. That is used to heat water, which drives a turbine. Essentially, reactors are giant nuclear kettles. SMRs will be a fraction of the size and have up to a third of the generating output of a typical large reactor. The modular element means they will be built to order in factories - as a kit of parts - then transported and fitted together, like a flat-packed power station. The aim is to save time and money The government wants a secure, reliable, affordable and low carbon energy system. In 2024, nuclear accounted for 14% of the UK's electricity generation, according to provisional government figures. The aim is to boost that. Along with 30 other countries, the UK has signed a global pledge to triple nuclear capacity by 2050. But no new nuclear power station has been built since Sizewell B began operating in 1995. And most of those in operation are due to be retired by the end of the decade. The SMR industry is in its infancy and, around the world, about 80 different designs are being investigated. Only China and Russia have small reactors up and running. The UK government is convinced that, with investment, SMRs will create thousands of jobs and boost manufacturing. Initially though, both government and private investment will be needed to turn the designs into a commercially viable reality. In the US, companies including Google, Microsoft and Amazon, with their power-hungry data centres, have signed a deal to use the reactors when they become available. Where will the UK bury all its nuclear waste? UK to dispose of plutonium stockpile Sellafield could leak nuclear waste until 2050s In 2011, the Conservative government identified eight sites for "new nuclear" (larger reactors), at Bradwell, Hartlepool, Heysham, Hinkley Point, Oldbury, Sellafield, Sizewell and Wylfa. Then, in February 2025, the prime minister said he would cut planning red tape to make it easier for developers to build smaller nuclear reactors on additional sites across the country. Certain criteria would have to be met, Sir Keir Starmer said. No sites would be approved close to airports, military sites or pipelines. Locations valuable for nature or at risk of flooding would also be ruled out. Great British Nuclear, a public body with statutory powers to push through the government's nuclear plans, ran a competition to find a firm that would develop and build SMRs in the UK. It aims to select and announce a location by the end of 2025, with the first SMR operational by the mid 2030s. Preferred locations are likely to include old industrial sites, such as former nuclear plants, or old coal mines close to the grid. Rolls Royce beat two American consortiums in the competition, Holtec, GE Hitachi. A Canadian company, Westinghouse pulled out. The financial controversy around the new large reactor being built at Hinkley Point C in Somerset is a perfect example of what the UK is trying to move away from. It is running a decade late and has overspent by billions of pounds. SMRs promise to be quicker, easier and cheaper to build. But while they will eventually be built to order, cost savings don't kick in until designs have been finalised and modules are reliably rolling off factory lines. So the first SMRs will probably be very expensive to build. The cost of dealing with nuclear waste also has to be factored in. Sellafield, in Cumbria, currently deals with most of the country's waste, but it is running out of space and costs are spiralling. In 2024, leading nuclear scientists on a government advisory committee recommended any new nuclear power station design should include clear plans for managing waste, to avoid the "costly mistake of the past". Taxpayers today are still paying for Sellafield to deal with nuclear waste from the 1950s. Nuclear industry experts the BBC has spoken to are convinced that SMRs - and more nuclear power - will eventually reduce the cost of our electricity supply. Public attitudes to nuclear power appear to be linked to those prices. A government survey in 2024 suggested that 78% of people would find an energy infrastructure project more acceptable if they were offered discounts on their bills. Although the government has announced discounts on electricity bills for households close to upgraded pylons, there has been no such announcement yet relating to homes near SMRs. The International Atomic Energy Agency says nuclear power plants are among "the safest and most secure facilities in the world". Nuclear power's reputation is tarnished though by high profile disasters, where radioactive material has been released into the environment - including in Chernobyl, Ukraine, in 1986 and Fukushima in Japan, in 2011. Dr Simon Middleburgh, a nuclear scientist from Bangor University, whose research focuses on developing new nuclear materials, describes the smaller reactors that are being considered for the UK as "incredibly safe". "The UK's ONR (Office for Nuclear Regulation) is treated as a sort of gold standard internationally in terms of the regulatory environment," he told BBC News. Some experts do have concerns about nuclear waste. Scientists from the government advisory group recently said the issue of how radioactive waste from SMRs that are in the design stage "appears, with some exceptions... to have been largely ignored or at least downplayed". The number and location of SMRs is also a security issue. With more reactors spread over a larger area, potentially built on industrial sites and closer to people, Dr Ross Peel, a researcher in civil nuclear security from Kings College London, says the security burden will be higher. Security at nuclear power stations is provided by armed police - the Civil Nuclear Constabulary. Dr Peel says the fact that existing nuclear sites generally have "miles of empty land around them" means that anyone in the vicinity arouses suspicion. If officers spot anyone they could just "look through the binoculars and ask 'what are you doing?'," he said. "In urban or industrial environments, suddenly you're trying to do security in a very different [way]."