On October 12, 2026, UK Minister for Artificial Intelligence Kanishka Narayan laid a written statement in the House of Commons, “Artificial Intelligence Policy” (HCWS357), on strengthening the UK’s resilience against increasingly powerful AI. He said the government “cannot rely solely on the companies developing these technologies to assess and manage the risks they may pose.”
On testing, the minister said the government had worked with the labs and the US government over recent weeks, from a gathering of AI developers at Dumfries House to talks at the UN General Assembly, “to retain access for Britain’s AI Security Institute to the most powerful AI models before they are released.” He confirmed that AISI, which has more than 100 technical specialists, “are now conducting rigorous evaluations of the latest generation of models, including Gemini 4 Argon.”
The statement announced an urgent extension of the government’s frontier AI cyber-hardening programme. Two pilots run by the Government Cyber Unit used AI to find and address 1,352 vulnerabilities across 548 code repositories in 18 departments. The government is also developing, with the National Cyber Security Centre, DCMS and AISI, a capability to respond “when AI agents cause serious harm”, and is considering how the Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill, now in the House of Lords, could cover AI cyber and loss-of-control risks, including near-miss reporting. It also said the UK will explore how British hardware expertise can help verify claims about how AI systems are developed and run.
Why it matters: it is the UK government’s on-the-record confirmation that pre-release access for its safety institute was at risk and has been restored for at least one frontier model. It also commits the UK to building government machinery for incidents caused by AI agents, not only by human attackers using AI.
What it does not show: the statement does not say why access was in doubt, for how long, or which other labs’ models AISI is testing. The incident capability and the bill changes are plans, with no budget, date or legal text.