Liz Kendall

Liz Kendall has been Labour MP for Leicester West since 2010, serving in shadow roles including Shadow Secretary of state for Work and Pensions before Labour's 2024 general election victory. She was appointed Secretary of state for Science, Innovation and Technology in July 2024, taking on a department responsible for the AI Safety Institute, spectrum regulation, space policy and, from April 2026, the Sovereign AI Unit. Her portfolio spans industrial AI strategy, digital infrastructure and the UK's position in international AI governance debates.

Kendall launched the UK Sovereign AI Fund on 16 April 2026, telling an audience that AI was non-negotiable for national security and that its independent investment committee would operate free from political interference. She framed the £500m fund, chaired by Balderton Capital's James Wise with Josephine Kant as Head of Ventures, as Britain betting on its own AI ecosystem rather than ceding the model layer to US providers.

Kendall has been a consistently active Cabinet minister on UK AI policy through 2026. At the Royal United Services Institute on 28 April 2026 she named five UK AI hardware start-ups and pre-announced what became the AI Hardware Plan. On 29 May 2026 she signed the UK-France Strategic Biomedical Alliance in Health and AI, the first bilateral Science pact of its kind, linking the Isambard-AI supercomputer with France's GENCI. The AI Hardware Plan she had previewed at RUSI was delivered as a £1.1bn package at London Tech Week on 8 June 2026, detailed in Lowdown's european-tech-sovereignty coverage rather than repeated here.