Image: Richard Townshend [CC BY 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
Norfolk MP replaces Amanda Solloway as minister for science, research and innovation
George Freeman has been appointed the UK’s new science and research minister, following a reshuffle that saw Amanda Solloway removed from the job.
Freeman wrote on Twitter that it was “a huge privilege and honour to be asked by the PM” to take the portfolio. He added: “We have a historic opportunity to unleash UK science & innovation for post-Covid recovery.”
Freeman was elected MP for Mid-Norfolk in 2010 and was the UK’s first dedicated minister for life sciences in 2014-2016. Prior to this, Freeman was a government adviser responsible for co-ordinating strategies on life science in 2011-2014.
He was educated at Oxford and Cambridge, and has experience in founding and running biomedical companies.
He also has deep ties in Conservative policymaking circles. He led Theresa May’s policy unit while she was prime minister and founded the 2020 Conservatives group of centre-right MPs.
Challenges ahead
Freeman has been appointed at a crucial time for the science sector, ahead of a comprehensive spending review that many figures say must provide a detailed budget to explain how the government will deliver its ambitious R&D targets. The government has committed to raise public R&D investment to £22 billion by 2024-25 and to increase total UK R&D spending to 2.4 per cent of GDP by 2027.
“We are all waiting to see a multi-year settlement for science and innovation, a meaningful roadmap of how to get to 2.4 per cent, and by when, and for a more meaningful statement of how all this contributes to ‘levelling up’,” said Kieron Flanagan, a professor of science and technology policy at the University of Manchester.
He added: “The spending review submissions have already been made so the incoming minister will have to live with whatever his predecessor argued for”.
Looking ahead to tasks for the new minister, Flanagan noted that the bill to set up the Advanced Research and Invention Agency is still going through parliament. “Getting Aria established will obviously be a key task,” he said.
Other priorities he included are keeping “the momentum going on research careers and culture issues, and—importantly—on regularising the budgeting for the UK contribution to the costs of the EU R&D programmes.”
Sarah Main, the executive director of the Campaign for Science and Engineering, hailed Freeman’s “significant experience” and said, "The minister comes into the role at a pivotal time with the UK government promising to deliver significant increases to public investment in R&D in the upcoming spending review.”
‘Innovation nation’
Freeman is currently leading the prime minister’s Task Force on Innovation, Growth and Regulatory Reform (TIGRR), and his website describes him as “a long-standing localist committed to bold decentralisation as core to unlocking the UK as an innovation nation”.
Former science minister Chris Skidmore congratulated him on Twitter, saying “he has huge experience and passion for the research community. Look forward to working to achieve that science superpower vision! (Ps don’t forget 2.4%).”
Commenting on the reshuffle, shadow science minister and Labour MP Chi Onwurah told Research Professional News: “Once again science seems to be an afterthought—it would be nice to have a science minister in place for a while, then we might actually get a long-term plan for science.”
Of the new science minister, she said: “George previously served as minister for life sciences so knows some of the brief. He will have to work hard to place it at the centre of government thinking and not as an afterthought.”
“And he is going to have a hard time convincing the science community he really wants to see more diversity, from his all-male department.”