Amanda Solloway is the fourth UK science minister in just over a year, and was first elected to parliament in 2015 to represent a constituency in the English Midlands. Her responsibilities as science minister will include managing the annual £8-billion (US$10.3-billion) science and research budget, however, she comes to this job with no experience of working as a full minister, and her role looks different from that of her immediate predecessors. For the first time since 2010, the minister responsible for science does not also oversee universities, where most publicly funded research is carried out. Solloway is also a parliamentary undersecretary of state, rather than a more-senior minister of state, in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), which oversees science.
A government reshuffle in the United Kingdom has born another new science minister — a position that has seen a revolving door of appointees, firings and resignations in recent years. The latest appointment also comes with an apparent political demotion for the role, which expert observers say is in conflict with a government that seems to have put research and innovation at the heart of its agenda.
