UK lawmakers slam gov’t semiconductor strategy delay

This follows the Committee’s report in November 2022 which listed key recommendations for the government strategy, such as better co-operation with allies to safeguard supply and to secure inward investment. 

"It's a poor excuse for the government to hide behind its failure to publish a semiconductor strategy for not responding to our practical recommendations fully," said Committee Chair and Labour MP Darren Jones.

This insistence from the Committee comes after Covid highlighted the effect that constrained global semiconductor supply chains can wreak. With heightening tensions between Western nations and China over Taiwan’s territorial integrity, one of the world’s largest semiconductor producers, the threat to semiconductor supply again looms. A leaked early copy of the UK government’s strategy warned that Britain’s over-dependence on Taiwan for semiconductors makes it especially vulnerable to such disruptions. The Committee conceded that semiconductor supply chains are “inherently global” and so the UK should not try to meet supply domestically but the sector should focus on the country’s strengths in R&D, design and compound semiconductors.

The government had agreed on the findings of the Committee’s November report, claiming there was need for "timely, coherent and decisive action to be taken across the market" and that it was already engaged in initial talks with countries like the US, Japan, and Korea on the future of the semiconductor market.

Yet, many of these partners are already ahead of its semiconductor strategy: the US had already in August 2022 announced roughly $280bn in fundingto encourage investment in domestic semiconductor manufacturing and research; Japan has plans for its state-backed semiconductor venture Rapidus to partner with IBM on the development of cutting edge chips, and the EU in November announced plans to allocate €43bn to boost R&D for semiconductors, with a goal of producing 20% of the world's semiconductors by 2030.

The UK’s semiconductor strategy was promised already in April 2022, with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport claiming to be working on one that was "to be published shortly.” Yet this delay to the report due to be published last Autumn has brought the ire of the country’s semiconductor sector. In a letter to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, industry heads said its “confidence in the government’s ability to address the vital importance of the industry is steadily declining with each month of inaction.”

One of the UK’s current leaders in this industry is the Japanese-owned firm Arm, a semiconductor and software design company based in Cambridge. It creates products that underpin many chips found in smartphones. Yet its sales to manufacturers in China has hit a wall after the company determined the US and UK would not approve licenses for it to export technology to China.

The government has tried to abate criticisms of the delay by reiterating the semiconductor strategy will be published as soon as possible. No concrete publication date, however, has been mentioned.