Local MP Alan Mak has welcomed Labour's u-turn on the UK National Supercomputer after he led an 11-month campaign to get it reinstated.
The Labour Government cancelled Britain’s new £800m National Exascale Supercomputer project within weeks of coming to power last year - even though the previous Conservative Government had fully funded it.
Mr Mak, who is Shadow Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, said researchers and tech businesses from the Havant area and across the country have been denied access to world-class computing power while our competitors have raced ahead.
Now Chancellor Rachel Reeves has announced funding for the £750m project in another Government u-turn.
Mr Mak explained: "This is very good news for Britain's science community, but Labour's original scrapping of the supercomputer will still be costly because it will take two years for it to become operational. The delay will punish our scientists.
"ARCHER2, the UK’s current National Supercomputing Service, can do the work of 250,000 laptops joined together.
"But for Britain to stay competitive, it should have been replaced by the end of this year with a new National Exascale Supercomputer that is 50 times more powerful.
He added: "Edinburgh University, the UK's leading centre of supercomputing and data science, has poured £31m into constructing a new bespoke facility to house the new supercomputer.
"But that facility has been sitting empty, a monument to Labour’s tech failure and lack of ambition.
"Now, because of the delay, the danger is that breakthroughs won't happen and the world’s tech heavyweights will surge ahead of us."
