PAC Chair Warns AI Is Approaching Government “Like a Tsunami” as Ageing IT and Skills Gaps Hold Whitehall Back

The chair of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has warned that artificial intelligence is approaching the UK government “like a tsunami”, and that the civil service may not have the skills to cope.

Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown makes the warning in his second annual report as PAC chair (HC 629), published on 14 October 2026. The report is his commentary on the committee’s scrutiny of public spending over the past year. It is not law and does not set government policy.

“It is approaching government like a tsunami, and I remain unconvinced that the skills, expertise and capability within the civil service that are needed to harness this technological revolution are yet in place,” he writes in the foreword.

AI and digital skills

Later in the report, Clifton-Brown repeats the warning: “AI is approaching government like a tsunami, and I remain sceptical that government is prepared for the enormity of this challenge.”

He says AI offers “significant opportunities” for government, but only if it gets the right specialist skills in place. He adds that it is still unclear how the government’s planned reforms will close “the digital skills gap in practice and by when”. He also warns that repeated reorganisations of Whitehall departments, most recently the creation of the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade, could make things harder.

According to the report, around 6% of civil servants work in digital and data roles. The government wants to raise that to 10%. Clifton-Brown says this will need a “sustained effort” to recruit and keep specialist staff.

Ageing IT

The report says the government is “showing a worrying lack of urgency in addressing the long-standing issue of legacy IT systems”. It says these old systems create serious cyber security risks and stop departments from using new technology.

Clifton-Brown also names old IT, along with weak digital skills and leadership and difficulty sharing data, as barriers to tackling fraud.

Other figures in the report

The report covers most of government, starting with defence. Other figures it gives include:

• Fraud and error: between £55 billion and £81 billion a year.
• Benefits: the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) estimates it overpaid £9.9 billion, or 3.2% of benefit spending, through fraud and error in 2025–26. It aims to cut this to 2.8% by 2028–29, which Clifton-Brown says lacks ambition.
• Asylum: more than 100,000 people claimed asylum in 2025. The Home Office and Ministry of Justice spent around £4.9 billion on asylum in 2024–25.
• NS&I: the state savings bank’s digital transformation programme, started in 2020, was estimated in December 2024 to cost £3 billion, £1.3 billion more than in 2020. It has been rated “red” since 2022–23.
• Bank of England: by contrast, the Bank’s new Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) payment system, which settles around £790 billion of sterling payments a day, launched successfully in April 2025. It cost £431 million over nine years. The report holds it up as a model for government.

What this means

• AI is a top concern for Parliament’s spending watchdog. The PAC chair doubts the civil service is ready for it.
• Old IT is holding government back. Legacy systems are named as a cyber risk and a block to new technology and to fighting fraud.
• These are warnings, not rules. The report is the chair’s assessment; it is up to the government to act.

Sources

1. House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts, “Annual Report of the Chair of the Committee of Public Accounts (2026)”, HC 629, 14 October 2026. https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5902/cmselect/cmpubacc/629/report.html

Related stories

• Open Rights Group Says 22% of Home Office Asylum AI Summaries Failed Expert Checks
• UK CNI Under Attack: 93% Hit by Successful Cyber Attacks — and the Defences Aren’t Keeping Up
• Baroness Campbell Speaks in the House of Lords Using an AI Recreation of Her Own Voice