Chancellor unveils £600m AI resilience plan as Tories attack HMRC bank powers

The Chancellor has set out a £600 million package to strengthen the UK's artificial intelligence resilience and security, in what looked like a pre-Budget announcement. The plan includes money to help the UK respond to evolving cyber and AI-enabled threats and promises what ministers called the biggest ever investments in protections from cyber risks and future threats.

The package includes up to £300 million of public-private backing for a new AI laboratory, according to the announcement. The Chancellor said AI could transform daily life, with every firm, community, hospital, school and part of the economy able to benefit. He also said he understood and shared the concerns of working people, and set out what he described as a distinctively British approach to AI, one that does not leave workers behind and defends the national interest while spreading the benefits and growth across the country.

The announcement comes amid mounting concern about AI-driven job losses. The Chancellor presented the funding as a way to harness AI for good in every community across the UK and to shore up the country's ability to respond to cyber and AI-enabled threats.

The Conservatives dismissed the announcement as a shopping list of projects rather than a coherent strategy. They also attacked what they cast as another pre-Budget trail by the Chancellor.

Separately, the Conservatives seized on a Financial Times report that HMRC would be given powers in the Budget to deduct money directly from the bank accounts of tax evaders. Shadow Chancellor Andrew Griffith said Labour wanted the tax man to be able to empty bank accounts over a few hundred pounds and leave people with nothing to pay the rent. He called it absurd for Labour to hand the tax man such powers, said the tax authority would collaborate with credit agencies to decide which accounts to raid, and described that as outrageous.

The government's case is that the AI funding will support security and growth while protecting workers. The opposition's response shows the Budget debate is already moving beyond the AI package to tax enforcement powers and the wider question of how far the state should reach into personal finances.