{"id":598863,"date":"2026-08-28T17:50:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-28T17:50:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/598863\/"},"modified":"2026-08-28T17:50:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-28T17:50:12","slug":"labour-rejects-zack-polanskis-call-to-slam-brakes-on-building-ai-datacentres-datacentres-uk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/598863\/","title":{"rendered":"Labour rejects Zack Polanski\u2019s call to \u2018slam brakes\u2019 on building AI datacentres | Datacentres – UK"},"content":{"rendered":"

Labour has rejected calls to pause construction of major AI infrastructure in Britain after the Green party leader, Zack Polanski, said it was time to \u201cslam the brakes on these energy-guzzling, water-guzzling<\/a> datacentres\u201d.<\/p>\n

The government hit back at the opposition party\u2019s proposal of a \u201cmoratorium other than [for] local-scale datacentres for the local community\u201d, saying it \u201cwould be a disaster for jobs and national security\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Greens\u2019 call for a pause comes amid one of the UK\u2019s worst droughts in years and predictions<\/a> that datacentres\u2019 electricity use, now standing at about 2.5% of the UK\u2019s supply, will rise fourfold by 2030.<\/p>\n

Datacentres contain the processing chips that power billions of AI prompts every day and Labour<\/a> has designated them as critical national infrastructure, a decision Polanski called \u201coutrageous\u201d. \u201cTo most people critical infrastructure means hospitals, water, electricity,\u201d he said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t mean artificial intelligence.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cRight now the government is putting our communities, our water security and our climate ambitions second to the demands of tech giants.\u201d<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the government said: \u201cA pause on building new datacentres would simply send investment and good jobs abroad, while leaving Britain dependent on overseas computing for the processing of sensitive health and defence data.\u201d<\/p>\n

They said critical national infrastructure status did not give datacentres priority access to water or electricity, nor did it automatically put them ahead of households during shortages, and that in England datacentres\u2019 water usage represented less than 1% of non-household water consumption.<\/p>\n

The row comes amid increasing signs that datacentre policy, already a major political issue in the US midterm elections, is rising up the agenda in Britain. In energy- and water-rich Scotland, the Scottish National party government appears to be \u201cinching towards a moratorium<\/a>\u201d amid voter pressure, while local disputes have erupted from Devon to Buckinghamshire and Cardiff to Fife where residents have raised fears about noise, heat, traffic and the visual impact of datacentres affecting house prices.<\/p>\n

The AI minister, Kanishka Narayan, has linked the need for more AI datacentres to strong defence and this month claimed the British public \u201cdoesn\u2019t just want foreign billionaires to own things that matter to our lives. If we\u2019re being true to those British values, it is impossible to achieve that without building a sovereign level of datacentre capacity.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The government spokesperson said its refusal to pause development \u201cdoes not mean a blank cheque for big tech or that every datacentre should be approved\u201d. They said developers should \u201cprioritise clean power, use water responsibly, create British jobs and supply chains, and provide investment to the communities in which they are built\u201d.<\/p>\n

The tech equity campaign group Foxglove warned that with some datacentre developers seeking to mitigate long waits to connect to the energy grid by planning their own gas-fired power stations, there was a risk of a \u201cdeeply alarming backward step on climate action\u201d.<\/p>\n

Rosa Curling, its co-executive director, said: \u201cIt\u2019s good to hear that the government thinks there shouldn\u2019t be a \u2018blank cheque\u2019 for big tech\u2019s datacentres. But without urgent action, that\u2019s exactly what will happen \u2013 the public and the planet will be left to foot the bill for the environmental and social costs of these energy-hungry giants.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Labour has rejected calls to pause construction of major AI infrastructure in Britain after the Green party leader,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":598864,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[345,343,344,85,46,125],"class_list":["post-598863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=598863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598863\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/598864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=598863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=598863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=598863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}