New UK prime minister abolishes science and technology department in Whitehall shake-up

Britain's new prime minister, Andy Burnham, has abolished the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, dissolving the three-year-old ministry as part of a wider reorganization of Whitehall carried out shortly after he took office.

What changed

The department, created in 2023 by then-prime minister Rishi Sunak to bring science, technology and digital policy together under one roof, will see most of its functions absorbed into a newly formed Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade, while responsibility for digital transformation and online harms moves instead to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. The government has framed the change as a way to align technology policy more closely with economic strategy, arguing that folding research and innovation into the business department will produce a more coordinated national industrial strategy and reduce duplication across government.

Who moved where

Jonathan Reynolds, who previously led the old business department before serving as chief whip, has returned to lead the new combined department, which inherits the Sovereign AI investment unit, the Advanced Research and Invention Agency and UK Research and Innovation, bringing research funding and commercialization policy under one roof for the first time. Artificial intelligence policy has been elevated rather than folded in: Kanishka Narayan, appointed minister of state for artificial intelligence, will work jointly across the Cabinet Office and the new business department and will attend cabinet meetings, a first for the AI brief. The AI Security Institute is expected to remain closely tied to the Cabinet Office as part of that arrangement. Liz Kendall, the outgoing science secretary who helped establish the Sovereign AI Fund, stepped down before the reshuffle was formally announced, as did Lord Patrick Vallance, the science minister and former government chief scientific adviser.

Reaction from the tech sector

The decision has unsettled parts of Britain's technology and investment community. In an open letter published before the reshuffle was confirmed, the industry groups TechUK and the Startup Coalition warned that the old department gave the sector "a single government partner that understands it," and that folding it into a larger structure risked diluting attention to fast-moving areas like artificial intelligence and life sciences just as momentum was building. Supporters of the change counter that embedding science and technology policy directly inside the government's economic engine room, rather than keeping it siloed in a standalone department, will make it easier to translate research into commercial growth. Parliament's own science and technology committee has said it expects to hear directly from ministers in the coming weeks about how the transition will be managed and which parts of government will take the lead on ongoing initiatives, including the country's AI adoption plans.