Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer has placed several experts who aren’t politicians into government posts

COVID tsar Patrick Vallance appointed UK science minister

Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer has placed several experts who aren’t politicians into government posts

The scientific adviser who graced UK televisions with nightly updates during the COVID-19 pandemic has been appointed as the country’s science minister. The appointment is one of many made by new UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who began naming his cabinet after his Labour Party won a landslide in the election on 4 July.

Patrick Vallance, a clinical researcher and former head of research and development at GlaxoSmithKline, takes up the role in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, which saw several reorganizations and ministers during the Conservatives’ 14-year rule.

Vallance’s appointment as a scientist who is not a Member of Parliament and who has no ministerial experience seems to be a first for the science ministry. He was government chief scientific adviser under the Conservatives from 2018 to 2023 and shaped the government’s response to the COVID pandemic.

Vallance’s hiring is “a reassuring signal to the wider research community, that they’ve actually got somebody who understands what they do and the constraints”, says Jill Rutter, a former civil servant and researcher at the Institute for Government, a think tank in London. There is some precedent for having a non-politician in the role, says Rutter, noting that business leader David Sainsbury held the post for eight years during Tony’s Blair’s Labour government.

Centrist minister

Vallance will serve under Peter Kyle, who was appointed secretary of state for science, innovation and technology on 5 July and has a seat in the Cabinet, the prime minister’s most senior advisers. Kyle held the science brief in Labour’s shadow government in opposition since September 2023. The secretary — who has worked as an aid worker and has a PhD in community economic development — is likely to be welcomed by the industrial research community. Writing on X, former Conservative science minister George Freeman referred to Kyle as “not one of the Old Left — but a dynamic modernising centrist reformer”.

The full ministerial team of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology has yet to be announced. Chris Byrant, who was previously shadow minister for creative industries and digital, has been appointed as a junior minister in the department. So far Chi Owurah, a long-standing shadow minister in the science, research and innovation team has yet to be given a role.

Alongside Vallance, Starmer has appointed other external experts to ministerial posts. Business leader and chair of the Prisons Reform Trust charity, James Timpson, becomes prisons minister, and Richard Hermer, a lawyer with expertise in international law and human rights, becomes attorney general, the government’s chief legal adviser. Because they have not been elected as Members of Parliament, all will be given peerages in the House of Lords, the upper house of UK parliament, which will allow them to serve as ministers.

A “big plus” of appointing experts from outside politics is that they are less likely to seek more senior political appointments, says Rutter. Vallance “won't be looking for a promotion to another job and looking to be reshuffled,” she says.

The expert appointments echo the moves of former Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s Labour government, which appointed non-politicians to some ministries, including the Department of Health, as part of an aim to install a ‘government of all talents’, says Kieron Flanagan, a science-policy researcher at the University of Manchester, UK.

But Flanagan cautions that appointing an expert isn’t a guarantee of success as a minister. “You just exchange ignorance of the technical and professional aspects of the subject matter for ignorance of the high level and practical politics of the matter.”

Flanagan suggests that Vallance has been appointed because of his professional experiences as chief science adviser. These “have given him a strong perspective on things like cross-government coordination, how the science base can be mobilised to support public policy goals, but also how to make a ‘mission’ work”, for example, the vaccine taskforce, which was established during the pandemic to drive the rapid development of COVID vaccines.

Continuity in service

Outside of these expert appointments, the prevailing message from the new government is continuity, says Rutter. “The good news is that you’ve got people going into those roles who have had those roles in opposition.”

On the campaign trail, Labour’s manifesto namechecked Britain’s “excellent research institutions” as an area where the United Kingdom has a global advantage and one they would back as part of efforts to kickstart economic growth. But it didn’t feature any specific funding pledges for science.

Eyes will also be on Bridget Phillipson, who has higher education in her wide brief as education secretary. In her first speech at the Department for Education on 5 July, Phillipson referred to “the state of university finances” as one of several issues that staff “all know well, but that have had rather less attention in recent weeks during the election campaign”.

Many universities have found themselves in economic difficulty as a result of a fall in the number of international students and a freeze on domestic tuition fees since 2017.

Climate focus

Researchers are also hopeful that the Cabinet will inject ambition into the country’s climate agenda. The previous government had rolled back and delayed several decarbonization measures and announced new exploration licences for gas and oil companies, jeopardizing Britain’s role as a climate leader.

Starmer has appointed Ed Miliband as energy secretary. Milliband, who lost the 2015 UK general election as Labour leader, has a record of championing environmental and climate issues while being outspoken on inequality, says Joeri Rogelj, a climate scientist and director of research at the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London. “There is also hope that this climate ambition of the Energy Secretary is supported by the other cabinet picks in key positions.”

Alongside Miliband, foreign secretary David Lammy has been a campaigner for a fair transition to a low-carbon economy that benefits all communities, and the need to combine racial and climate justice.

However, there are concerns after Starmer and Rachel Reeves, now chancellor of the exchequer — the most senior UK finance minister — in February slashed proposed funding for the Labour Party’s green investment plan from £28 billion to £15 billion a year. It remains to be seen whether the government will pursue this pre-election pledge.

There’s also a tension between the Labour government’s growth agenda and its net-zero ambitions, says Marie Claire Brisbois, an energy-policy scholar and co-director of the Sussex Energy Group at the University of Sussex, UK.

Nevertheless, it’s a “step change” from the previous government, she says. “It’s quite hopeful that there are people in key portfolios that have experience with the topics [of climate and environment].

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-02261-4

This story originally appeared on: Nature - Author:Elizabeth Gibney