New science minister at the business department will not attend cabinet
Nusrat Ghani, a minister of state at the business department, has been named as the UK’s new science minister.
Ghani, MP for Wealden in East Sussex, takes on the role after George Freeman quit on 7 July this year in protest over then prime minister Boris Johnson’s leadership.
The position of science minister has been vacant since Freeman left, with state secretaries Kwasi Kwarteng and then Jacob Rees-Mogg in charge of the brief.
Ghani takes on the brief after government reshuffle announcements were paused during the 10-day period of national mourning for the Queen, and further delays since. She was appointed as a minister, but without a brief, on 7 September.
Her full title is Minister for Science and Investment Security.
Her responsibilities include:
- science and research (domestic and international)
- Horizon Europe membership
- innovation strategy/science superpower
- critical minerals and critical mineral supply chains
- maritime and shipbuilding
- life sciences (including vaccine production)
- space strategy (excluding OneWeb)
- technology, strategy and security
- artificial intelligence (including the Office for AI)
- fusion
- R&D people and culture strategy
- research approvals
Her responsibilities also include supporting the secretary of state at Beis on:
- investment security
- investment pipeline and opportunities
- UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)
- Advanced Research and Invention Agency (Aria)
Call for cabinet-level position go unheeded
There have been repeated calls from the sector for the appointment of a science minister, and for the position to be elevated above the junior ministerial one held by Ghani’s predecessor George Freeman, and Amanda Solloway before Freeman.
For example, on 27 September, the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee wrote to prime minister Liz Truss recommending that “a science minister should be appointed at the earliest opportunity, and this should be a cabinet-level position”.
The new appointment goes some way towards what the sector has been calling for, as Ghani has been given a more senior position of minister of state—while Freeman and Solloway were both parliamentary under secretaries of state.
No 10 has confirmed to Research Professional News that Ghani will not attend cabinet.
Unlike Freeman, who was a life science minister in a previous government and familiar to the R&D sector, Ghani, like Solloway when she started, is relatively unknown to the sector.
She is facing a full in-tray, which includes defending the R&D budget amid economics crisis, and solving the UK’s long-delayed access to EU science programmes.