Legislation announced in the King’s Speech would give ministers powers to temporarily relax existing rules to allow live testing of next generation defence and maritime technology.

The Regulating for Growth Bill, announced as part of the King’s Speech programme, contains provisions that could have significant implications for the UK defence and maritime sectors, enabling controlled real-world trials of technologies that current regulatory frameworks would otherwise slow or block.

The Bill would create cross-economy sandboxing powers, allowing existing rules to be temporarily relaxed under strict controls to test new products and technologies in live market settings. Two applications with direct relevance to defence are understood to be among the government’s priorities.

The first is Maritime Autonomous Surface Shipping. It is understood the government intends to explore establishing a regulatory sandbox for autonomous vessels, breaking down regulatory barriers and increasing UK competitiveness in commercial shipping. This is seen as a route to enabling “controlled testing of next generation defence technology in closely supervised environments, supporting national security while accelerating innovation, productivity and growth across the UK defence industrial base.”

The second is artificial intelligence, cross-cutting AI sandboxes are intended to enable “responsible testing and adoption of AI-enabled products and services across multiple sectors where existing regulatory frameworks currently slow innovation.”

The government was careful to frame the legislation as distinct from deregulation as trials would operate under strict safeguards covering consumer protections, workers’ rights and human rights, with regulatory oversight throughout. Where a trial proves successful, the Bill would allow changes to be embedded permanently in law.

The UK is understood to have identified the US, China, Singapore and Canada as the competitive benchmark, with concern that without greater regulatory agility Britain risks “falling behind and ceding technological leadership” to countries already accelerating market pilots and capital mobilisation.