Vallance to chair new AI taskforce at the centre of government

TL;DR:

  • Lord Vallance has been appointed chair of a new AI Taskforce reporting directly to the Prime Minister.
  • The unit sits in the Office for the Prime Minister and Cabinet, and the AI Security Institute moves under it.
  • AI Minister Kanishka Narayan will lead the taskforce and attend Cabinet.

The government has named Lord Vallance chair of a new AI Taskforce, six days after Andy Burnham abolished DSIT and moved the AI brief into Cabinet. Vallance reports directly to the Prime Minister; the taskforce itself reports to Cabinet Secretary Antonia Romeo and AI Minister Kanishka Narayan, and is based with First Secretary of State Louise Haigh in the Office for the Prime Minister and the Cabinet.

Where AI authority now sits

The structural detail matters more than the appointment. Responsibility for the AI Security Institute — the body running the frontier-model evaluations and cyber capability assessments that have driven much of the UK’s technical credibility — transfers to the same centre-of-government office. Evaluation capacity and adoption strategy now sit under one roof rather than in a sponsoring department.

The government has explicitly reached for the Vaccines Taskforce as its template, citing an “empowered unit, with clear accountability to the Prime Minister”. That is a deliberate signal about pace, and Vallance is the obvious person to carry it: he led the Vaccines Taskforce, served as Government Chief Scientific Adviser from 2018 to 2023, and was until this month a DSIT minister. He also takes the chair of the Oxford-Cambridge Growth Corridor.

Looking forward

The Vaccines Taskforce comparison invites a test the government may come to regret. That unit had one measurable objective and a hard deadline. This taskforce is charged with directing AI strategy, transforming public services and unlocking growth “in every postcode” — a remit broad enough to resist the accountability the model depends on.

For UK businesses, the practical question is whether centralisation shortens the route from policy to procurement. Departmental AI ambition has repeatedly outrun the infrastructure beneath it, and a taskforce with the Prime Minister’s authority could clear that faster than a department could. Whether it also absorbs AISI’s independence is the question worth watching.

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