As the general election draws closer, the question of who will take charge of UK policy will soon be answered. The tech sector has been a bright spot for the UK economy over the past decade and many see it as a key growth driver for the next parliament.
A strong tech industry requires the right balance of government support. UKTN has put together a rundown of the key Labour and Conservative ministers and shadow ministers seeking re-election who will likely be pulling the tech policy levers after 4 July.
CON: Michelle Donelan – Secretary of state for science, innovation and technology
The UK’s first tech secretary, Michelle Donelan came to run the government’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) in 2023, following its establishment by Rishi Sunak.
The tech community welcomed the establishment of the department, which under Donelan has launched numerous funding packages including a £2.5bn quantum strategy, £100m for AI research hubs and upskilling and £100m to support the biotech industry.
Donelan had the high-profile task of coordinating the AI Safety Summit, which resulted in the signing of the Bletchley Declaration – a joint commitment from 28 nations to tackle AI risks.
Donelan has also had a leading role in tech legislation, notably the controversial Online Safety Act. The law, which received royal assent in October 2023, was designed to set tougher standards for online platforms hosting potentially harmful content.
Child safety campaigners have celebrated the law’s efforts to protect young people from damaging content. However, its attempt to weaken encryption for messaging services drew harsh criticism from the likes of WhatsApp and Signal. This amendment was ultimately left out due to feasibility issues.
In October 2023, Donelan spoke at the Conservative Party conference where she warned the crowd of the “creeping wokeism” in scientific research.
That same month, Donelan wrote to UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) calling for the removal of two researchers, wrongly accusing one of them of supporting or sympathising with Hamas.
The researchers were suspended, but an internal UKRI investigation found no evidence that they had breached the principles agreed to for the role. Donelan shared a letter of apology and was forced to pay £34,000 in libel damages – covered by the taxpayer.
Donelan has held a handful of other cabinet positions, including education secretary – a role from which she resigned after less than 36 hours – and minister of state for higher and further education.
CON: Andrew Griffith – Minister of state for science, research and innovation
Andrew Griffith was appointed as a minister within DSIT during Rishi Sunak’s 2023 cabinet reshuffle, spurred by the sacking of former Home Secretary Suella Braverman.
By the time of his appointment, Griffith had already carved out a name for himself among the fintech and cryptoasset industries as the economic secretary to the Treasury.
At the Treasury, Griffith called for support for the UK crypto sector, backing the development of a sterling-backed digital pound.
Griffith was involved with granting regulators enhanced authority over digital currencies via the Financial Services and Markets Act. He also said he supported stricter regulation of BNPL, however, he faced criticism from the opposition for not doing enough to ensure it.
Since becoming a minister in the tech department, Griffith has been heavily involved with the department’s space tech ventures. This includes the Space Industrial Plan to boost investment into the sector, the £8m UK Innovation and Science Seed Fund for space tech startups and funding for in-orbit agriculture projects.
Griffith also struck a deal to collaborate on science, tech and R&D with Saudi Arabia during a visit to the Middle Eastern Kingdom last March.
The science and tech minister has worked closely with former Prime Minister Boris Johnson as his chief business adviser, parliamentary private secretary and director of his Number 10 Policy Unit.
CON: Saqib Bhatti – Parliamentary under-secretary of state for tech and the digital economy
Saqib Bhatti, like Griffith, joined the DSIT team as part of the 2023 reshuffle, replacing the sacked Paul Scully.
In Bhatti’s first interview as a minister in the tech department, he told UKTN that the success or failure of AI regulation would “affect the very fabric of our society”. He also defended the government’s decision not to legislate AI regulation in the short term, despite fears of falling behind the EU and the US.
In a later interview with UKTN, Bhatti supported Home Secretary James Cleverly’s assertions that legal migration needed to be curbed but claimed that he and DSIT were “leading the charge” on ensuring the UK tech industry could benefit from foreign talent.
Bhatti has made efforts to champion the British semiconductor industry through visits to various chip plants across the UK. The tech minister was part of a campaign encouraging British chip firms to apply for funding via the Chips Joint Undertaking from Horizon Europe.
The West Midlands minister is also an outspoken Eurosceptic, having previously founded the pro-Brexit group Muslims for Britain.
CON: Viscount Camrose – Parliamentary under-secretary of state for artificial intelligence and intellectual property
Jonathan Berry, the fifth Viscount Camrose, is a Tory peer who was appointed to the tech department by Rishi Sunak in 2023, with a brief covering AI and intellectual property.
Granting a hereditary peer – who entered politics in 2022 – dominion over a technology that may come to define the future came as a surprise to many, not least including Berry and his House of Lords colleagues. However, the descendent of newspaper magnate William Berry was keen to throw himself into his new brief.
As a senior figure in Conservative AI policy, Berry was heavily involved in the AI Safety Summit. Ahead of the summit, Berry defended the inclusion of China amid geopolitical concerns in an interview with UKTN in which he said the nation’s influence in the AI space was too large to ignore.
Berry vocalised the government’s position on legislating AI, stating that in the “short term” there would be no new UK AI laws to ensure regulation doesn’t hurt industry growth.
The viscount was also part of a government scheme inviting SMEs to submit novel AI innovations for the chance to access funding from a £7m pot.
LAB: Peter Kyle – Shadow secretary of state for science, innovation and technology
Peter Kyle was appointed as Donelan’s opposite in a Labour reshuffle last September. Kyle’s background is not what most would consider tech-focused, having worked extensively in his early career with children’s charity groups.
Following his election as the MP for Hove and Portslade in 2015, Kyle has served as shadow minister for victims and youth justice, shadow minister for schools and shadow secretary of state for Northern Ireland.
During the 2024 election campaign, Kyle said a Labour government would remove barriers for Big Tech firms looking to build critical infrastructure, such as data centres, in the UK.
Kyle has also pledged to adjust the procurement process for British startups bidding for government contracts. The shadow tech secretary said the party would simplify the complex bidding framework for SMEs.
Kyle announced several of Labour’s key tech policies ahead of the release of its 2024 manifesto, including the plan to end short-term R&D funding cycles in favour of 10-year budgets.
He also criticised Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s comments deriding “Mickey Mouse degrees”, stating that a Labour government would end the “war on universities”.
LAB: Chi Onwurah – Shadow minister for science, research and innovation
Chi Onwurah, an MP since the 2010 election, was brought on to Labour’s shadow science and tech department alongside Kyle in September 2023, opposite the Conservative’s Griffith.
Onwurah is perhaps best known for campaigning for gender and racial equality, but her earlier career has positioned her well for a role in tech policy.
Having received a degree in electrical engineering from Imperial College London in 1987, Onwurah has held numerous roles in hardware and software development, largely in the telecommunications sector. Onwurah also spent more than six years as an executive at the regulator Ofcom, serving as both the head of telecoms strategy and later the head of international technology strategy.
This year, Onwurah met with several high-profile University College London spinout founders, including Synthesia’s Lourdes De Agapito Vicente and Carbon Re’s Buffy Price.
Onwurah has spoken about encouraging greater collaboration in science and tech policy, in a shot at Donelan following the UKRI Hamas scandal, and has encouraged more women to get involved in engineering.
LAB: Chris Evans – Shadow minister for tech and the digital economy
Chris Evans was appointed as the shadow tech minister – opposite Bhatti – in November last year, having previously held the opposition front bench positions of shadow minister for work and pensions and shadow minister for defence procurement.
Evans’ doesn’t have much in the way of tech credentials, though he has made the banking and finance sectors a key focus of his political career.
In his early days as an MP, Evans spoke on the dangers to consumers posed by unregulated lending products, notably payday loans.
Evans has called for inclusivity in the sectors, having attempted to bring forward legislation in 2012 requiring banks to be more responsible for serving the needs of the financially excluded.
In 2016, Evans formed an all-party parliamentary group he described as an “educational space” for MPs to have a dialogue with the hedge fund and private equity sectors.
LAB: Matt Rodda – Shadow minister for AI and intellectual property
Prior to entering politics, Rodda worked as a journalist at the Coventry Telegraph and the Independent with a focus on education writing. He would then go on to work as a civil servant in the Department for Education before being elected as an MP in 2017.
In his time as shadow AI minister, Rodda has been bullish on the technology’s capacity to drive economic growth. Rodda said at a party conference fringe event in 2023 that AI innovations would be central to a Labour government’s key mission of achieving the “highest sustained growth of any G7 economy”.
Rodda was highly critical of the Conservative government’s AI white paper, claiming that the lengthy process of its creation was indicative of the Tories’ ability to keep up with the technology. He said the slow release of the paper as well as the “glitches and problems” during its creation was “letting down people working in AI and letting down the UK economy”.
Rodda, alongside Evans and Onwurah, was named on a 40-strong list of Labour MPs who represent Labour’s digital vision, posted by the party on social media in May.
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