Day: June 15, 2025

Critics question speed and scale of embedding AI into public sector when debate rages about use of copyrighted material

The government’s artificial intelligence (AI) tool known as Humphrey is based on models from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google, it can be revealed, raising questions about Whitehall’s increasing reliance on big tech.

Ministers have staked the future of civil service reform on rolling out AI across the public sector to improve efficiency, with all officials in England and Wales to receive training in the toolkit.

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Richard Tice says voters will turn on government unless energy bills fall

• A useful enemy? Why Tories and Reform are calling net zero policy into question

Labour will back down on its policies aimed at achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions, the deputy leader of the Reform has predicted.

Richard Tice, the energy spokesperson for Reform and MP for Boston and Skegness, told the Guardian his party would withdraw from the 2015 Paris agreement that tries to limit global heating to 1.5C.

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Cross-party consensus on climate appears to have broken down despite polls showing public support for action

• Labour will drop ‘unaffordable’ net zero policies, predicts Reform’s deputy leader

Just as Labour forges ahead with net zero policies, the chief energy spokespeople of the UK’s two main rightwing opposition parties are openly questioning long-settled climate science, in what seems like a mission to discredit and confuse the whole issue.

It is a development that would have been unthinkable just three years ago, when the four-decade-long cross-party consensus on the climate still held firm. Even up to last year’s general election, every mainland party other than Reform UK campaigned on a commitment to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

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