Treasury using AI to reply to taxpayers’ emails as Starmer vows to ‘mainline technology into veins’ of UK
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Prime minister has vowed to use AI ‘drive incredible change in our country’. Chancellor Rachel Reeves and other Treasury officials are using artificial intelligence software to help them respond to taxpayers’ emails. In a major announcement, Sir Keir Starmer’s government vowed on Sunday to launch a new push to “mainline AI into the veins” of Britain, in a bid to drive economic growth and “deliver a decade of national renewal”.
![[The Prime Minister has said the AI industry needs a Government ‘on their side’]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/12/22/dde253352a0fffee1db76962e38f341aY29udGVudHNlYXJjaGFwaSwxNzM2Nzc4OTg4-2.78323249.jpg)
Downing Street is set to unveil a 50-point plan intended to help Britain lead the world in the technology by boosting computing capacity 20-fold by 2030 – with the aim of driving up productivity by using AI for everything from spotting potholes to reducing admin for teachers.
In recent weeks, the government has published briefings on a vast range of AI-related tools already being rolled out in government and the public sector – including tools to help the Foreign Office quickly provide Britons with information overseas, and to help other departments improve job adverts.
According to a public briefing note, the software is used automatically when an email is received, with Chat-GPT technology used to summarise the correspondence and flag it under several categories, such as “high risk” or “meeting request”. “It may suggest standard lines where a routinely asked question is detected, but does not write the entire response, which is still prepared and signed off by a Treasury employee,” according to the briefing note.
Officials claimed the technology would save “several hours of manual work per day for multiple team members”, and said tests had found the tool to have an accuracy level of around 70 per cent – meaning it performed “as good or better than existing processes”.
