As usual we had a lot of big announcements made at the conference: a National Office for AI Development and Regulation, expanded apprenticeship schemes, expanded housing support schemes and a refresh of the economic strategy to name but a few.
All this sounds great!
However….
As with everything this government says you have to take it with a mountain of salt and these big announcements are nothing new. When you scratch beneath the surface of each of these glossy announcements you find there’s more to the story.
National Office for AI Development and Regulation
On the face of it this sounds like a great thing to announce, but it comes with a lot of questions. Where will this office sit? How will it be funded (and what will it cost)? What is it’s actual purpose & how will success be measured?
None of these questions were answered by the announcement and some of them are pretty basic – you have to know what you are trying to do before you start to do it. Something as vague as “AI Development and Regulation” could mean anything – “Artificial Intelligence” or “AI” are the trendy new buzzwords and it seems everyone is trying to get in on the action. Companies are developing “AI toothbrushes” and an “AI bookmark” and other bizarre applications ( although how on earth AI can be integrated in to a toothbrush and provide meaningful benefits is something I’ll happily admit is entirely lost on me but it does feel very “Isle of Man Government” as a concept).
The Digital Agency has plan and a strategic approach for helping leverage AI for the benefit of our economy. In 2024 they had the actions in the image below – basically “we need a proper AI strategy”
By 2025 this had evolved to the image below – again basically, “we need a proper AI strategy”
Indeed even the 2024 and 2025 Department for Enterprise Department Plans have actions relating to AI – again basically, “we need a proper AI strategy”:
You know what isn’t in any of these plans? “Establish a National Office for AI Development and Regulation”.
So where did this announcement come from? It’s entirely out of the blue and completely disconnected from the work that’s been going on over the last 3 years! The previous position was “we need a comprehensive strategic approach”, now we seem to be jumping into spending money setting up a new government office with little to no strategic thought at all.
It very much feels like this was government making an announcement because they needed to fill airtime and “AI” is the current trendy buzzword – familiar enough that we all know what it refers to, but vague enough that most of us don’t really know what it actually means.
Expanded Apprenticeship schemes
This was excellent news! The Government announced they were removing the cap on incentive payments for employers with more than 10 staff.
Hang on.
This was a cap introduced by this government in April 2024.
A cap they were warned would cause issues.
A policy they robustly defended in July 2025 and were still defending at the start of September 2025
So sometime in September the government performed a complete about face on a policy that they were repeatedly warned was causing harm.
Whilst government is presenting this as a big new policy shift, the reality is they are just trying to undo damage they caused.
Expanded housing schemes
The Chief Minister also committed to “substantially revise and improve our first time buyer schemes”.
This sounds great!
He then clarified that this meant they will:
increase the salary thresholds and the upper limit on purchase prices and importantly, we will also look to expand the level of support for the ‘Choice’ scheme which allows for purchases on the open market
Whilst these will be very welcome changes, they don’t represent a “substantial” revision or improvement – especially as improvements to these schemes have been part of the Housing and Communities Board action plan since at least 2024. Government needs to be bold and look at a range of housing scheme options – rent to buy, mid-rent, mortgage guarantees – because the reality is there isn’t a “one size fits all” approach to supporting people into housing.
The unfortunate truth is this government has completely failed to tackle our housing challenges.
The government is promoting that over 300 houses have been build during Alf’s tenure, which sounds great. The problem though is when you look at previous house building stats the reality really bits.
Up to 2009 the Island built c400 houses a year, from 2010 to 2021 that fell to c200 a year1. Now though, even if we assume “over 300 houses” equates to 399 houses over 4 years (2021-2025) then it means the government is boldly and proudly announcing house building has fallen to c100 a year. That’s a quarter of what it was before 2010 and half what it was 5 years ago.
Trying to dress up minor technical changes to shared equity schemes as a big win for housing is a poor attempt to gloss over these failings.
Economic Strategy “refresh”
This is a huge announcement.
The economic strategy was the defining document of this administration, it set out a 15 year approach to diversifying our tax base, investing in public infrastructure and services and driving sustainable economic growth.
It was approved by Tynwald in November 2022.
By September 2025 though this economic strategy is “outdated” – largely it seems because of the announcement of the National Office of AI Development and Regulation (See above!). This review is to be undertaken by a “high level advisory board”, presumably appointed by the Chief Minister from out of his buddies in the Chamber of Commerce (“co-producing” it with the “business community” in his words).
Less than three years into this 15 year strategy we are seeing government want to take a sharp right turn away from a strategy that cost an absolute fortune to develop and should have set the direction of travel.
The reality is I don’t think the Chief Minister has ever really been behind the economic strategy, you can see this in all the decisions made over the last few years – “diversify the tax base” doesn’t mean “an NHS levy on low and middle earners”, “invest in infrastructure to be able to cope with a growing population” doesn’t mean cutting funding for core infrastructure work and key frontline services.
In summary
The government conference was a lot of flash but no real bang, a series of tepid announcements and policy U-turns that the government tried to dress up as bold policy decisions.
Plenty of smoke and mirrors but nothing of real substance, but this for me sums up the way this administration is going – they are more focused on the PR, on “how will this go down on social media” instead of “is this the right thing to do”?
In conversations, a few people have compared the government conference to a circus show and this got me thinking about some lines from a musical that ring true about this administration’s latter day performance.
Instead of government we had a stage
Oh what a circus (lyrics)*
Instead of ideas, a prima donna’s rage
Instead of help we were given a crowd
(S)he didn’t say much, but (s)he said it loud
- In case anyone is interested, the Manx Taxpayers Alliance have published some statistics on their website https://community.im/taxpayersalliance/2025/06/30/isle-of-man-housing-construction-remains-at-record-lows/ ↩︎
Lawrie Hooper MHK 
To become a competitive AI centre, I would presume that would have to include significant data centre infrastructure. Such infrastructure would likely have to be vast in size – see the scale of projects being undertaken in the US and Middle East for example. Surely the island doesn’t have that kind of free space available!? Not to mention the energy demands needed to power them. Also – any space for such infrastructure removes space which could potentially have been used for housing. I hope I have ignorantly missed something in my understanding of what “AI development” means to the Govt, because at face value it indeed feels to me like a case of including the latest buzzword to keep up with the Jones’.