Farewell Patrick Vallance

Patrick Vallance has resigned after nearly a decade in government first as chief scientific adviser then as science minister. Vallance leaves the science brief for personal reasons as Andy Burnham becomes Prime Minister.

By his own admission Vallance is not the world’s most comfortable politician but he will be remembered as a minister that has successfully extended the influence of his department over all parts of government. In an era of fiscal constraint he has overseen a science budget that has grown to record levels and an agenda that has been firmly embedded into the government’s plans.

There are many specific achievements the sector will look back on fondly including strengthened engagement with Horizon, lodging key research fields like cybersecurity in the industrial strategy with funding to match them, and working with UKRI to lead an expanded spending portfolio.

Aside from the big commitments it is in policy continuation where Vallance may come to be regarded as the most successful. He inherited a strong fiscal and political settlement from the Conservative government and he has consolidated the gains with more focus on cutting bureaucracy, funding regulatory innovations, and strengthening investment across research dependent business support activity.

And like any government minister he leaves a mission only half finished. His resignation comes as UKRI publishes its new strategy with stretching targets on bureaucratic reform and economic returns. The push for universities to do less research better still has yet to crystallise into a coherent agenda. And with Manchester’s Andy Burnham on the horizon it is still not entirely clear how the research agenda and devolution agenda intertwine.

At the start of his tenure disgraced former cabinet minister Peter Mandelson said that UKRI lacked the “heft and punch to make the really big calls.” Vallance may look back on his tenure on a UKRI that has promised radical reform in who it funds, how it funds, and what it will fund, with the real test to come on whether it can live up to its promises. The science budget has been successfully extended and the next minister has a big role to make the public case for its continued support.

More than anything, the sector has lost an ally who understood science. Born in Balham in 1960 Vallance taught at St George’s Hospital Medical School until he became a professor at UCL’s medical school in 1995. After academia Vallance joined GSK where he was President of Research and Development from 2012 until 2017.

It remains to be seen if the new Prime Minister will choose another scientist to lead the brief, or as widely suspected, a more conventional politician.