Scrapping the UK’s science department midway through major reforms to research funding may signal Andy Burnham’s intention to entirely rethink how the Labour government tackles huge challenges facing the university sector.
“We are going to see a period of policy flux, if not fundamental policy redesign,” said Ben Johnson, a former special adviser to several science ministers at both the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) and the Department for Science, Innovation and Trade (DSIT), the latter of which was scrapped on the first day of Andy Burnham’s premiership.
Its two leading figures – science secretary Liz Kendall and science minister Patrick Vallance – have also both left government, although AI minister at DSIT, Kanishka Narayan, remains in post. He will straddle the newly renamed Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Technology (DBIST) and the Cabinet Office while attending Cabinet meetings.
With Vallance instigating significant reforms to research funding over the past two years – including a major shake-up of how UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) distributes funding and a push, as outlined in the post-16 skills White Paper, published in October, for more universities to specialise in which areas they conduct research, Johnson said the next as-yet-unnamed science minister may be landed with multiple research funding issues to solve.
