Patrick Vallance

So thi- this is the c- this is kind of the Anthony Fauci of, uh, of China, head of the expert panel.

Um, but of course, um, just as the same way as our chief medical officers, whether it's Anthony Fauci or Chris Whitty or Patrick Vallance, um, are, um, uh, have to take note of political reality.

Uh, the same is this true in China or even perhaps more so.

Although ours take plenty notice of political reality, that's for sure, unfortunately.

You can decide.

You don't need me to tell you what to think, do you? Patrick Vallance, our Chief Scientific Officer, 2012-2018, President of Research and Development at Global Pharmaceuticals, GSK.

We believe it's, well, we don't believe it's been reported in the Telegraph that it's cashed in £5 million worth of shares.

I mean, £5 million.

Chris McDonald is also an unusual science minister compared to what came before.

His predecessor, Lord Patrick Vallance, spent nearly a decade in government, first as Chief Scientific Advisor, then a science minister and has been a lifelong advocate for UK science policy.

Macdonald spent two decades in the steel industry before entering Parliament in the 2024 general election when he was elected as MP for Stockton North.

McDonald is clearly a minister who wants to make science more useful to the government and economy, but he's taking over at a time when researchers already feel anxious about cuts and restructures.

I'm thinking of people like David Willett.

They understood the need to support technology and science, but also were very committed to the social sciences and humanities and could talk very convincing about that.

Even Patrick Vallance, who was very much involved linked to bioscience.

He was the chief scientist at GSK, and he was the government's scientific advisor.

There has been much talk of the impact of artificial intelligence on our economy and society over the coming decades.

Sir Patrick Vallance, Britain's former chief scientist, said in 2023, there will be a big impact on jobs and that impact could be as big as the Industrial Revolution was.

There are optimistic comparisons to be made with the epochal period of change that began in Britain in the 18th century and spread through Europe and the world in the 19th.

Then, as now, new technology may be disruptive, but ultimately the economy would reconfigure into a state of greater efficiency, bringing ever more prosperity.

You know, we often sort of say, you know, does who the minister is really matter? You know, to what extent is Jackie Smith driving HE reform, for example, in the FA? But, you know...

I think no one would deny that Patrick Vallance, the science minister, actually did sort of impose a lot of his own sort of personal beliefs and policy steers onto the system, you know, in particular in the direction he gave to UKRI, the appointments he made, especially Ian Chapman, a CEO, you know, so that may sort of fade away a little bit, you know, as we have sort of now have an MP and a politician as opposed to, Early indications, my sort of tip would be that one of the things that's going to take quite a lot of the sort of oxygen in that kind of innovation space is stuff around spin-outs, commercialization, and especially the question of sort of whether science and tech companies remain in the UK, which is to some extent is sort of one step removed from universities.

So it could be that there'll be sort of less government attention on things like, you know, on the sort of bucket one and the ref and things like that.

That may be left more to the sector to get on with.

Let me know how comfortable you are with all this as we go along.

So that's Patrick Vallance there.

He seems to have changed from chief scientific officer to minister of state for science.

And in the UK, as far as I understand it, the minister has complete authorization.

Richie Sunak, you might remember, was our prime minister for a period of time.

This says to continue serving on the REI, the Advanced Research and Invention Agency Board.

So former government chief scientific advisor, Sir Patrick Vallance, to continue serving on the REI board.

Whether he was still there or not, I've never heard anything that said he's left.