UK officials have not published a complete count of how many government departments, critical public services or critical national infrastructure systems rely on US-owned cloud. The clearest recent figure is narrower: in a 2026 survey, around 55% of participating central-government organisations said more than 60% of their own estate was on cloud, and every participant said it used one of the two leading providers, both US-based. That points to concentration, but it is not a measure of the share of all government systems running on US cloud.
The political concern is broader than cloud alone. In June 2026, the House of Commons Science, Innovation and Technology Committee warned about public-sector dependence on a handful of major technology providers, highlighting Palantir and also naming Microsoft and Amazon Web Services (AWS). The underlying questions are whether the UK can control access to its data, keep essential services running if a supplier is disrupted, and switch providers without undue difficulty.
What the government figures establish—and what they do not
A written parliamentary answer on 5 February 2026 provided the most useful recent public snapshot, but it did not answer the literal question of what proportion of departments, critical public services or critical national infrastructure depends on US-owned cloud.
- Central-government survey: Around 55% of surveyed organisations reported that more than 60% of their own estate was hosted on cloud. This is the share of survey respondents crossing that threshold—not the proportion of all departments, all government IT, or all government systems hosted in the cloud.
- Provider use: Every survey participant said it used one of the two leading providers, both US-based. The answer does not establish what proportion of each organisation’s estate was with either provider, or provide a full breakdown of government cloud workloads by supplier.
- Critical services and infrastructure: The government said it holds no centralised record of how much critical public service infrastructure relies on US-owned cloud. It also said it does not generally comment on individual suppliers used by critical national infrastructure.
An earlier written answer, on 27 October 2025, estimated that up to 60% of the government estate was hosted on cloud platforms. At that time, the government said it did not hold a more granular split between AWS, Google and Microsoft. That earlier estimate is not directly comparable with the 2026 survey: one describes an estimate of the government estate, while the other reports what surveyed organisations said about their own estates.
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Why politicians see concentration as a sovereignty and continuity risk
The concern is not simply that a provider is headquartered in the United States. “Data sovereignty” involves questions such as where data is stored, which laws may apply to it, and who can administer or access the systems that hold it. Location and control are related but not identical: a data-location answer alone does not describe all access or legal-jurisdiction questions.
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Concentration also raises a service-continuity question. If many public bodies rely on a small number of providers, a serious disruption or a difficult supplier relationship could affect numerous services at once. Moving workloads elsewhere may be complicated by technical dependencies, interoperability, cost and the effort of switching. The committee’s warning treats vendor lock-in as a risk that can be addressed, rather than an unavoidable outcome.
In its 3 June 2026 announcement, Dame Chi Onwurah MP, chair of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, said: “A critical part of this transformation should include reducing the UK’s dependence on a small number of big US tech companies like Palantir. Vendor lock-in isn’t inevitable, and the current position leaves us seriously exposed.” The committee’s concern is about public-sector dependence on a handful of technology providers; it should not be recast as a finding about AWS and Microsoft cloud use alone. Palantir was its principal example, with Microsoft and AWS among the wider concentration concerns it named.
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What the CMA did about cloud-market concentration
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) completed its cloud market investigation and published its final decision on 31 July 2025. The case is closed. The CMA recommended that it consider strategic-market-status investigations for Microsoft and AWS; that recommendation was a proposed next step, not a completed designation of either company.
This distinction matters: the investigation’s findings and recommendation form part of the regulatory response to market concentration, but the case page does not say that Microsoft or AWS was designated as having strategic market status as a result of that investigation.
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What financial-sector oversight adds—and where it stops
From 13 July 2026, Microsoft, Google Cloud, AWS and Oracle were designated Critical Third Parties for specified critical services supplied to the UK financial sector. The regime gives regulators oversight of those specified services’ resilience. It does not diversify public-sector suppliers generally, establish where all government data is held, or make financial firms’ supplier-risk responsibilities disappear.
Financial firms remain responsible for managing risks arising from their suppliers. Rachel Blake MP, Economic Secretary to the Treasury and City Minister, said the designations would help ensure the critical services financial firms rely on remain resilient, protecting consumers and businesses while supporting growth.
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The scope is therefore specific: the designations address systemic services provided to the financial sector, not every cloud service, government department or critical national infrastructure system.
What reported police concerns do—and do not—show
A Guardian investigation published on 18 September 2026 reported that historical police risk assessments raised concerns about data location, cyber threats and possible access by US government insiders. The article also reported responses from the National Police Chiefs’ Council and Microsoft. Microsoft disputed the suggestion that using cloud makes customer data inherently insecure or automatically exposed to foreign governments, and said it had not provided UK government data in response to requests from US or global authorities.
These are reported and contested risks, not evidence in themselves that a particular breach occurred or a regulator found unlawful access. They illustrate why discussions of sovereignty need to separate where information is stored from who may be able to access or administer it, and to assess each claim in its proper context.
How to judge whether reliance is manageable
The public figures leave important gaps, so a useful assessment of any specific service needs more than a provider’s nationality or a headline cloud percentage. The relevant questions include:
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- Data location: Where is the information stored, and what does that location establish—or not establish—about access and control?
- Continuity and recovery: What happens to the service during a supplier incident, and how can it recover?
- Switching and resilience: How difficult and costly would it be to move workloads or use more than one provider?
- Interoperability and lock-in: Can systems and data work across providers, or do technical dependencies make switching harder?
- Regulatory scope: Which services are covered by oversight, and who remains accountable for managing supplier risk?
The available public evidence does not provide a like-for-like comparison of cloud suppliers on these measures. Nor does it quantify the share of all UK government or critical infrastructure systems that could be affected by a particular provider disruption. The political alarm is therefore grounded in documented concentration and gaps in the government’s aggregate picture, while the exact scale of exposure across the most sensitive services remains unquantified in the cited parliamentary answer.
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