A political row has erupted between Holyrood and Westminster over a new AI skills funding programme announced today by Keir Starmer.

Scottish Government ministers have said they were not consulted on plans to give one million pupils across the country the skills and tools needed to get the AI-powered jobs of the future.

The prime minister unveiled the £187 million “TechFirst” programme to bring digital skills and AI learning into classrooms and communities and train up people of all ages and backgrounds for the tech careers of the future.

According to a UK Government press release, a series of interventions will be rolled out in ‘each of the UK’s regions and nations’, to bring new learning opportunities to schoolchildren and older learners.

But a Scottish Government spokesperson said: “The Scottish Government was given no advance notice of this announcement, despite the UK Government stating that this programme will extend to all regions and nations across the UK. It is unclear at this stage whether there will be any additional funding to Scotland as a result. The Scottish Government will engage with UK counterparts to seek urgent further detail.”

It is not clear yet how the TechFirst programme will work in Scotland, where education is devolved. However, details from the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), revealed that the ‘flagship’ strand of the programme “TechYouth” – backed by £24 million of government funding – will give 1 million students over three years across every secondary school in the UK the chance to learn about technology and gain access to new skills training and career opportunities.

There will also be an online platform to inspire and educate students about the potential of computing and tech careers – building on CyberFirst’s Explorers which has access to most secondary schools in the UK with 100,000 students registered already. This will bring together learning tools and training opportunities in a streamlined accessible space.

In each of the UK’s regions and nations, a local delivery partner will be selected by DSIT to run the programme and deliver activities to schools and colleges in local areas. This measure implies that the programme might run in tandem with the curriculum in Scotland, which is overseen by ministers at the Scottish Parliament.

The AI sector alone is valued at £72.3 billion and is projected to exceed £800 billion by 2035. It is growing 30 times faster than the rest of the economy, according to the UK Government, employing over 64,000 people across more than 3,700 companies.

However access to AI skills in the UK remains one of the biggest barriers to growth—especially for startups, scaleups, and regions outside London. According to a TechNation report released today, one in three UK tech founders say the availability of top talent is their biggest barrier to growth.

The UK Government hopes today’s investment will go some way to improve that situation. TechFirst will also support over 4,000 graduates, researchers, and innovators through three additional strands:

  • TechLocal (£18m) – will offer seed funding to help regional innovators and small businesses develop new tech products and adopt AI. A panel made up of local tech businesses will be established in each region to decide which applications have merit, with the necessary checks then done centrally by Innovate UK.
  • TechGrad (£96.8m) – will support 1,000 exceptional domestic students a year with undergraduate scholarships in areas like AI, cyber security, and computer science. This will also go towards 100 Research MSc places in key tech sectors, and 100 elite AI scholarships. Applicants will be able to apply to the scheme online and those successful will have their bursaries paid from a central fund.
  • TechExpert (£48.4m) – will give up to £10,000 in additional funding to 500 domestic PhD students conducting research in tech with the aim of accelerating cutting-edge innovation, strengthen the UK’s research pipeline in strategic technology sectors, and ensure that emerging talent is supported to contribute to national tech leadership.

Major industry players including IBM, BAE Systems, QinetiQ, BT, Microsoft and the Careers & Enterprise Company – the national body for careers education – have backed the initiative.

TechFirst builds on the success of the CyberFirst programme, which has already helped hundreds of thousands of young people gain cyber security skills.

Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, said: “AI developers power the next industrial revolution. AI talent, skills and research are crucial ingredients in the UK’s mission to become an AI maker, not an AI taker. We’re delighted to partner with the government to train the next generation of AI developers, capable of finding new cures for diseases, discovering new materials and building word-class AI companies.”

Debbie Weinstein, Google EMEA President, said: “Our AI Works report revealed that £400bn worth of economic growth awaits the UK, but half of this depends on workers embracing and using AI. That’s precisely why we’re thrilled to join this crucial initiative, essential for supercharging AI up-skilling, unlocking AI-powered growth and cementing the UK’s position as an AI leader.”