Digital sovereignty

This briefing has been published ahead of a Westminster Hall debate scheduled for 4.30pm on 10 March on technology sovereignty. The debate will be opened by Chi Onwurah MP.

What is digital sovereignty?

Digital sovereignty, also called technology sovereignty, may be defined as “the agency and capacity of any organisation to make intelligent, informed choices to shape its digital future by design.” The Minister for AI, Kanishka Narayan, has defined sovereignty in the field of AI as “the ability for a state to have strategic leverage when it comes to this technology, such that it can ensure ongoing access to critical inputs, and ongoing assurance that its wider economic and national security objectives can be met more broadly”.

In the UK and Europe, debates around digital sovereignty have arisen due to concerns around the potential security risks of Chinese technologies and, more recently, the market dominance of US ‘big tech’ companies.

Actions taken by the Trump Administration have led some commentators to speculate that services provided by US firms could be shut off. The Open Rights Group, which is campaigning for a UK digital sovereignty strategy, has argued: “If the UK got into an argument today with Trump – over Greenland, Israel, or trade – then Trump could swiftly close down the UK’s government, by closing down US owned IT and Cloud systems.”

Views about how to achieve digital sovereignty vary greatly because there is no agreement on what digital sovereignty looks like or what its key outcomes should be. Policy choices would, for example, depend on whether the main priority was growth, resilience, security or something else.

Public debates around digital sovereignty often focus on ownership. Policy proposals for addressing the national origin of key suppliers range from developing an alternative technology ‘stack’ in full, to creating sovereign capacity to serve key areas such as public services, to reforming procurement rules to favour small businesses.

Others have argued that ownership is not necessarily a problem, and that the government should focus on ensuring technologies are open source and interoperable. This would reduce the risk of becoming dependent on a single supplier.

UK Government policy

The UK Government does not have an overarching policy on digital sovereignty. It has set out its approach to building “sovereign capability” in key technologies in the June 2025 Modern Industrial Strategy and the accompanying Digital and Technologies Sector Plan.

One area where sovereignty is more explicitly mentioned is AI. The Prime Minister has argued that the UK should be an AI maker, not an AI taker. The government’s approach, as set out in the AI Opportunities Action Plan and Compute Roadmap, has been to seek to ensure the UK has domestic capacity in the key inputs of AI development, namely computer processing power. It does not explicitly call for these to be provided by UK companies.

The government has also launched Sovereign AI Unit, with £500 million funding to support “national champions” in AI.

Public procurement

The government spends an estimated £14 billion per year on purchasing digital services. Recent reports from the National Audit Office, House of Lords Science and Technology Committee, and House of Commons Business and Trade Committee, have all argued that the government could support UK tech companies by reforming its approach to procurement. The National Audit Office concluded that the current approach to procurement favours large suppliers.

The government has recognised its dependence on a small number of technology suppliers, and says that it is seeking to address this through the new Digital Commercial Centre of Excellence within the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.

However, it has resisted recommendations from the Science and Technology and Business and Trade committees to explicitly favour British companies in procurements.

Calls for a digital sovereignty strategy

Some MPs and peers have recently called on the government to take a more proactive approach to sovereignty in digital technologies. During the committee stage of the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill, Liberal Democrat MPs tried to introduce an amendment that would have required the government to assess the need for a digital sovereignty strategy. The amended was rejected.

The Business and Trade Committee’s called for a “more structured” approach to identifying areas where sovereign capability is needed and how to address it. The committee called the government’s response, which pointed to existing documents such as the Industrial Strategy, “disappointing”.

Digital sovereignty in the EU

In contrast to the UK, digital sovereignty is a clearer driver of policy in the EU. A September 2024 report on EU economic competitiveness by Mario Draghi, former President of the European Central Bank, found the productivity gap between the US and EU could be explained by the former’s dominance of digital technology sectors.

On 18 November 2025, the French and German governments convened a Summit on European Digital Sovereignty. The summit agreed to a Declaration for European Digital Sovereignty (PDF). The declaration, which is not legally binding, calls for “long-vision and investments in strategic areas”.