Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, how much public money has been allocated for the development and maintenance of the AI tools (a) Scout, (b) Connect, and (c) Humphrey; and from which departmental budgets those funds have been drawn.

One of the functions of the new Government Digital Service is to incubate AI products and scale them into cross government services. As part of this funding for the development of Connect and Humphrey will come from the budget of the Incubator for Artificial Intelligence, which sits within DSIT's overall operating budget.

The level of funding is subject to the department’s settlement at Spending Review. Currently other departments are not charged for use of these tools, though the department will determine an appropriate operating model on finalisation of the Spending Review. Following a handover of the tool, future budgetary decisions for Scout will belong to the Infrastructure and Projects Authority.