Tony Blair is right – policy makers have to embrace and harness technological change. Unfortunately, that’s easier said than done, especially given how important it is to maintain probity and accountability in public private partnerships and procurement.

At UK Partnerships, Local Authority officials often say that they need our insights into future technology so that they can know how to write it into their tender documents – and they’re only half joking. The issue, of course, is that legislation and plans are always playing catch-up with the latest technologies.

For instance, take outdoor advertising and smart city technology. Government guidelines on advertising consent refer to paper posters on hoardings and bus stops, but they don’t cover digital, screen-based adverts, which generate far more revenue for all parties, and are now ubiquitous. By the time new guidance on digital advertising has been consulted on, debated, scrutinised and passed, it will likely be completely out of date.

This matters because it makes forward-thinking procurement challenging. How does a transport authority incorporate smart city tech into a 20-year concession tender? It can’t predict the future but if new tech is incorporated into an existing supply agreement, rivals will complain and potentially take legal action.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, the Private Finance Initiatives (PFI) for street lighting were focused on LED light bulbs. These agreements are now coming up for renewal, but they need smart city tech which didn’t exist at the outset of the PFIs. So do we renegotiate all PFIs and incorporate what we will need in 2043 when they end?

AI will also transform the functioning of Government – Alex Chisholm, outgoing head of the Cabinet Office, recently told a conference of the Reform Think Tank said that AI could save £5 billion in civil service costs and replace tens of thousands of civil servants. This may improve services but is it a good thing or a bad thing? It’s not for us to judge, but it is inevitable – so let’s get on top of it.

Tony Blair’s Institute has correctly said that all this requires a mindset change in government – but we believe it also means that we must radically change the way we determine laws and regulations in Parliament.

The Law Commission was established in the 1960s to review existing laws and make recommendations to Parliament to update laws to make them fit for purpose – not only in response to case law, but also to reflect real-world, technological changes. But the Law Commission languishes in obscurity, rarely grabbing headlines. That’s not surprising – the Commission’s reports don’t carry the weight of party manifesto commitments or Government-inspired legislative pushes. (Its founder was one Harold Wilson, author of the White Hot Heat policy – plus ca change).

There are other sources for tech-based policy thought. Our colleagues at Palace Yard Think tank produced a fantastic report recently on hydrogen policy; after consulting the industry, they made a series of recommendations to Government, Parliament and the Civil Service on what regulations will be needed to harness the hydrogen revolution. This may sound trivial, but without regulatory stability, investment will not flow into the industry, and the UK and other liberal democracies will miss the boat, if we haven’t already.  Palace Yard know a thing or two about legislative processes; with a former Deputy Speaker of the Commons, the Usual Channels (Cabinet Secretary of the Chief Whips Office), and a former Number 10 head of policy in their ranks, we should listen to them.

We need laws and regulations to be time-limited and subject to ongoing review (Select Committees are ideal for this). Pre-legislative and post-legislative scrutiny should be embedded into a permanent flow, with regulation functioning more like a river than a lake. Without these changes, countries which don’t care about democracy and accountability will outpace us and win the technology race. China doesn’t bother about outdoor advertising consent and planning laws, it just gets on with it; that’s why they can build a 1000-mile high-speed train in three years, and we can’t even build a branch line.

Politicians may be failing to embrace technology, but the problem runs deeper than that. To truly reinvigorate and renew our public services, we have to look to the systems themselves, and change how we think about legislation and regulation.