UK Launches Prime Minister's AI Taskforce: Lord Vallance to Chair, DSIT Scrapped in Major Whitehall Shakeup

Mission: Adoption, not rulemaking

The government has made clear that the Taskforce's remit is adoption, not regulation. It will set and implement the state's overall AI strategy, push the technology into public services, and connect that work to growth and industrial policy — but it will not create new rules . The stated aim is to unlock growth and prosperity “across the country,” and ministers explicitly modelled the unit on the Vaccines Taskforce that Lord Vallance ran during the pandemic .

Location and structure

The Taskforce sits within the newly created Office for the Prime Minister and the Cabinet (OPMC), alongside First Secretary of State Louise Haigh, No.10, No.10 North, and core Cabinet Office functions . Responsibility for the AI Security Institute — the government's frontier model evaluation body — has also been moved into the Cabinet Office alongside the Taskforce, consolidating AI oversight under one roof .

The wider AI shakeup: DSIT scrapped, AI minister elevated

The Taskforce announcement completes a broader restructuring that Burnham executed immediately on taking office on 20 July 2026 .

DSIT dissolved. The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, created by the Sunak government in 2023, was scrapped as a standalone entity . Its responsibilities were split: science, innovation, and business functions merged into a new Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade (BIST) under Jonathan Reynolds, while digital and tech policy functions moved to an expanded DCMS under Lisa Nandy .

Kanishka Narayan promoted. On the same day, Narayan — previously a junior AI and online safety minister — was promoted to Minister of State for AI, a joint post across the Cabinet Office and BIST, with a seat at the Cabinet table . This signals that AI policy is now treated as a central cross-government priority, comparable to national security or economic strategy, rather than a departmental silo .

AI centralised under the Prime Minister. Together, these moves pull AI strategy out of a standalone department and place it directly under the Prime Minister and Cabinet, with the Taskforce as the delivery vehicle. The government describes this as putting AI "at the heart of government" .