The Burnham government has introduced a significant shake-up of the UK’s technology policy landscape.
On one hand, the creation of a dedicated Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence – Kanishka Narayan – signals a recognition of AI’s growing economic and strategic importance.
On the other, the abolition of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, and the redistribution of its responsibilities across government, has generated considerable uncertainty within the technology sector.
This blog examines Narayan’s background and the experience he brings to government, before asking whether his promotion places AI more firmly at the centre of decision-making or simply gives a more prominent ministerial responsibility within an increasingly fragmented technology landscape across Whitehall.
From Cardiff to Silicon Valley to Government
Born in Bihar, India, Narayan moved to Cardiff aged 12, attending Cathays High School before winning a scholarship to Eton. He later studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Balliol College, Oxford, and completed an MBA at Stanford.
His pre-parliamentary career is particularly relevant to his new brief. After advising ministers in the Cabinet Office and the business and environment departments, he joined Lazard, where he worked with governments, major companies and technology start-ups. He subsequently moved into venture capital, working with Atomico and later leading Clocktower Ventures’ European operations, while also serving as Labour’s head of technology policy.
This experience across technology investment and policymaking helps explain both his appointment and his emphasis on AI growth, commercialisation and adoption.
Narayan entered Parliament after about two years at Clocktower Ventures. He was elected as the MP for Vale of Glamorgan in July 2024, winning with a majority of 4,216. He became Wales’s first MP from an ethnic-minority background.
It took Narayan 14 months to enter Government, before which he served as PPS in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
Yet, even as a PPS in Defra, Narayan began to deliver on the tech front for his constituency. On 21 March 2025, he launched All Hands on Tech, in which he pledged to create 1000 new jobs in the Vale’s technology, digital and innovation sectors by 2030.
Building Britain’s AI Capacity
In September 2025, he brought his agenda to government, attaining a promotion to Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for AI and Online Safety in the now abolished Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.
As Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for AI and Online Safety, Narayan covered AI Opportunities, AI Security Institute, Intellectual Property Office (IPO), Semiconductors, Tech for Growth, and Online Safety.
Narayan’s public record was predominantly focused on strengthening the UK’s capacity to develop and adopt artificial intelligence. He helped deliver measures including expanded AI computing infrastructure, funding for university-led AI laboratories, support for open-source developers and British AI companies, and a new AI and automation apprenticeship.
Although many of these measures originated in the government’s broader AI strategy rather than with Narayan personally, his announcements consistently emphasised expanding computing infrastructure, developing domestic AI capabilities and encouraging adoption across businesses and public services.
The Other Half of the Brief
Online safety remained a substantive part of Narayan’s brief. He introduced regulations making cyberflashing and the encouragement of serious self-harm priority offences under the Online Safety Act, led the government’s Media Literacy Action Plan, and contributed to the consultation on children’s social-media use, including by examining Australia’s approach to age restrictions.
The agenda’s most prominent political measures were, however, championed by Liz Kendall, who led on online safety and presented child protection as central to public confidence in technology, culminating in the announcement of an under-16 social-media ban. Therefore, one could argue that Kendall sought to advance much of the agenda’s public-interest framing, while Narayan became more closely associated with AI growth, capability and adoption.
AI Moves Up as DSIT Disappears
On 20 July, online safety was removed from Narayan’s portfolio, and he became the UK’s first dedicated Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence. The restructuring can consequently be interpreted as removing a responsibility that was important but less central to his emerging political identity, while retaining and substantially elevating his AI brief.
Under the government’s machinery-of-government changes, Narayan is now jointly based in the Cabinet Office and the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade (BIST). He will also lead the new Prime Ministerial AI Taskforce and attend Cabinet, although he is not a full Cabinet member. The invitation gives him access to senior decision-making but not the departmental authority or spending control held by a secretary of state.
His promotion gives him a more prominent title, greater access to the centre of government and a potentially stronger role in coordinating AI adoption across Whitehall.
However, Narayan’s personal promotion should not be conflated with an unambiguous strengthening of the AI portfolio itself. AI was previously overseen by a Secretary of State leading a specialist department. Narayan will now operate beneath more senior ministers in both the Cabinet Office and BIST, who retain ultimate control over departmental spending and priorities.
This distinction has been central to the external reaction. The Financial Times reported that some technology leaders welcomed placing AI closer to the centre of government and praised Narayan’s promotion, while others warned that dismantling DSIT could slow policymaking, disperse expertise and push technology down the list of government priorities. One industry figure characterised Narayan’s elevation as having helped avert a wider “revolt”, illustrating how his personal appointment partly softened opposition to the institutional changes.
Former special adviser Tom Skinner, argued that the reorganisation could leave the AI Minister functioning less as an autonomous “captain” and more as a “first mate” below a Secretary of State. Moreover, although the larger business department may possess greater institutional weight and more tight knit connections between UKRI, Innovate UK and the British Business Bank, its attention will also be divided across a much broader and more politically contested portfolio.
The Institute for Government has warned that abolishing DSIT risks losing focus, expertise and coordination, particularly because AI policy is now being separated from related areas such as digital government, emerging technologies and technology infrastructure. It also notes that departmental reorganisations impose both visible costs and less obvious losses in productivity while staff, responsibilities and budgets are transferred.
The result might, therefore, be described as centralisation without consolidation. AI strategy, public-sector adoption and the AI Security Institute have moved closer to the Prime Minister, but many of the capabilities required to deliver that strategy remain distributed across Whitehall. Digital delivery and online safety now sit within the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), research and commercialisation are located within BIST, and sector-specific AI adoption remains the responsibility of individual departments. For AI, the restructuring is therefore best understood as an exchange, where the coherence and specialist capacity of a dedicated technology department have been traded for greater proximity to the Prime Minister and access to wider economic-policy levers.
Lastly, the structure of the AI Taskforce itself creates a further question about authority. Narayan will lead the body, Lord Vallance will chair it, the Taskforce will report to both Narayan and the Cabinet Secretary, and Vallance will report directly to the Prime Minister. This arrangement could successfully combine ministerial leadership, technical expertise and civil-service authority. Equally, it could produce overlapping centres of influence unless the government clearly specifies who controls its budget, officials and final decisions.
The Title Is Clear. The Power Is Not.
Overall, whether the restructuring ultimately strengthens Narayan’s position will depend on the authority, budget and officials attached to the AI Taskforce, as well as his ability to influence departments that retain responsibility for digital delivery, regulation and sector-specific adoption. His title is now narrower and more senior, and AI strategy has moved closer to the centre of government. Yet the machinery through which he must deliver has become more dispersed, while science and technology no longer have a dedicated secretary of state and department to champion their priorities across Whitehall.