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How can the government maximise the opportunity provided by Brexit for the tech sector in the short-term?

I think what we need to do immediately is sign post where we're going. Britain is an incredible place for technology because of that science base – we have the people, that's the asset in technology. We have a country which is a nice place to be, it's got a great deal going for it. What we need to do is realise that because we can move faster, because were no longer incumbered by our European partners, we need to take advantage of that. We need to make Britain the place where, if you want to be working on the very latest technology – autonomous vehicles, personalised medicine, quantum computing, AI – you come to do it here. And we have the most important thing, the assets are the people. We need to make sure that we get the capital markets working in the way that we need, and there are a series of things we need to do there. But most importantly, the things that you don't think about for technology – creating a regulatory framework that can handle modern fintech, handle things like autonomous vehicles, personalised medicine, AI and privacy in a sophisticated way. And we that make the situation here because we're more forward-looking and we understand these things because we have the science base, we will make the UK the place to be doing this. Then we just need to make sure that, as we create more and more of this know-how, which were very good at, we keep that in the UK.

All we need to do now is signal that. People are in a wait and see moment. They're saying ‘what is it going to be like? Where are we going, what's the vision?' If we can communicate that vision, people will give us time. CEOs that are making decisions about where their research labs are going to be, they're going to have a reason to wait and see how this unfolds and see these regulations change. So, we don't even have to make it all happen today, we just have to make it clear the direction we're going in. And this is the important story about our future – it's our innovation and our openness to the future and our openness to change, and now the freedom we have to implement that change, that will allow Britain to become the place you come to do these things.

We have to have some subtle conversations as well. There's been a lot of debate about how we relate with things like immigration. Well, if you go to Silicon Valley – no one that starts a company in Silicon Valley is from Silicon Valley. Very few of them are actually from America. So, we have to be brave sometimes and say look – ‘if you are the world-leading expert in quantum computing, you're welcome, come here now'. We just need to understand that the reason we're going to let that person in from India or somewhere is we want them to create a company, to create know-how, we want them to employ 10,000 people. So, sometimes we have to be a little more nuanced in our conversations on these matters. But it is about understanding that, if we have the power behind technology in the technology age, that's what gives us true sovereignty.