EDM 2650 Letter to my MP
The UK needs a digital sovereignty strategy now
Subject: Support the EDM 2650 - the UK needs a digital sovereignty strategy now
Dear Charlotte Cane MP,
I urge you to support the EDM 2650, to create an urgently needed UK digital sovereignty strategy.
I’ve been working in the tech sector in the UK for 30 years, and am keenly aware of how fundamentally beholden private and public organisations digital services are to foreign companies. Whether it’s the well-known, like Google or Microsoft, or the less visible Palantir, Oracle or AWS - our entire digital infrastructure is owned and run primarily by US tech companies.
We should never have let this happen in the first place. The UK has the resources and capability to fully support our digital life. However, the convenience and confidence of our special relationship with the US meant we let our homegrown industries struggle to compete for our own digital service provision.
I believe that special relationship is now, at best, very strained. President Trump has already wielded his power over US big tech orgs to punish those he sees as adversaries, including the international criminal court. He won’t hesitate to do the same to anyone, whether an individual, corporation or nation state. We should not make it trivial for him or any other foreign organisation to wield such power over us.
There is a solution. It’s already government policy to use open-source systems, and ensure those systems are interoperable. However, this policy is inconsistently enforced. Our European neighbours are already making visible progress on moving away from US controlled services, and are committing to spending the kind of money needed to do so, particularly on open-source software.
Open-source doesn’t mean we stop working with US software, it simply gives us the opportunity to cut ties with organisations that may not have our interests at heart, and switch to another without major disruption.
This is why I ask you to support EDM 2650. I find it hard to believe that the principle would be alien to any UK political party. I firmly believe that it reflects the concerns of many in your constituency about the power of foreign tech on our democracy.
Yours sincerely
LRG
Agree with me? You should write a letter to your MP too. It’s really easy, thanks to:
Take action! What’s the problem? The UK’s digital backbone. The cloud services, data systems, and platforms that underpin government, public services, and democratic processes is dangerously reliant on a small number of foreign tech companies. Much of this critical digital infrastructure is controlled by US-based firms such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Palantir, whose services are embedded across government and the public sector. Other key providers are based in Israel and China. Together, these companies operate systems that are essential to how the UK state functions day to day.
action.openrightsgroup.org
EDM 2650 Letter to my MP
The UK needs a digital sovereignty strategy now
An LRG plea
Cover image: Image sourced from the Public Domain Image Archive / Internet Archive / University of Toronto Librariespdimagearchive.org