“At this point, I won’t go as far as a moratorium,” Prime Minister Andy Burnham told the House of Commons on 9 September, when a Labour MP asked him to back a pause on new data centres. Jacob Reid reported the exchange for Bloomberg.
On the same day, the think tank Verdant published a policy briefing that estimates planned UK data centres will create about a quarter of the permanent jobs the industry projects. Sawdah Bhaimiya reported the findings for CNBC, along with responses from the trade body techUK and the government. Both rejected the report’s method.
What Burnham said
The question came from Ian Lavery, the Labour MP for Blyth and Ashington. “With tech billionaires driving the deployment of AI, many of my constituents are concerned about job losses, misinformation and the infrastructure needed to support this technology,” he said, according to the Northumberland Gazette. He asked Burnham to support a moratorium until regulation catches up, and to introduce a Critical National Infrastructure Levy.
Burnham said it was important that communities see the benefits of data centres in their areas. They “can be the magnet that clusters in other investment over time,” he said. He pointed to the government’s AI Growth Zones policy, under which councils keep any growth in business rates.
