UK government chases AI while aging IT leaves it exposed, PAC chair warns

The UK government is pushing ahead with its AI ambitions yet is dragging its feet on replacing aging IT systems that leave departments vulnerable to cyberattacks, according to a damning assessment from Parliament's spending watchdog.

Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, chair of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC), warns in his second annual report that Whitehall is failing to tackle its longstanding technology problems, even as AI gives criminals and hostile states new ways to attack government systems.

"AI is approaching government like a tsunami, and I remain sceptical that government is prepared for the enormity of this challenge," Clifton-Brown writes.

The Conservative MP says ministers have announced reforms to improve digital capability but have yet to explain how they will close the civil service's skills gap, or when.

He also fears another Whitehall reshuffle, this time involving the creation of the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade, will make matters worse.

The numbers aren't encouraging.

Just 6 percent of civil servants work in digital and data roles, well short of the government's 10 percent target.

Senior specialists are particularly thin on the ground, and the PAC warns that meeting the target will mean recruiting, and retaining, many more of them.

And then there's the technology itself.

"Government is also showing a worrying lack of urgency in addressing the long-standing issue of legacy IT systems, which create significant risks for its cyber security and mean it cannot reap the benefits of new technologies," the report states.

The report also warns that generative AI is giving fraudsters increasingly sophisticated tools, while government departments risk falling further behind.

Fraud and error already cost taxpayers an estimated £55 billion to £81 billion annually, according to figures cited by the PAC.

Clifton-Brown isn't impressed with efforts to reduce those losses either.

The Department for Work and Pensions reckons it overpaid £9.9 billion in benefits through fraud and error in 2025-26, or 3.2 percent of its spending.