Patrick Vallance has resigned as science minister amid rumours that his department will be disbanded by the new UK prime minister Andy Burnham.
A former UCL medical school dean and head of research at GSK, Vallance was the government’s chief scientific adviser during the Covid pandemic before joining Keir Starmer’s Labour government in July 2024 as science minister as he joined the House of Lords as a peer.
His role was later enlarged in January 2025, taking on the responsibility for driving the Oxford to Cambridge economic growth corridor, a major initiative that was set to attract billions of pounds of government investment. In September 2025, Vallance also added nuclear energy to his ministerial portfolio.
His achievements in office include securing a record £86 billion budget for public research and development between 2026 and 2030, including £38.6 billion for UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) in the October 2025 Spending Review. He was also heavily involved in the government’s post-16 skills White Paper, which stressed the need for more collaboration between universities on research.
While technically more junior to Cabinet ministers Peter Kyle and Liz Kendall at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), he is widely regarded as the driving force behind UK science policy over the past two years. His “three buckets” model for research in which funding flowed to “basic, curiosity-driven, investigator-led research”, “applied research” and “R&D-intensive companies” is the inspiration for a major shake-up of UKRI being spearheaded by chief executive Ian Chapman, who took up the role last summer.
