Burnham's First Week Redraws the Map of UK Tech Governance | TechPolicy.PressAnalysis<br>Burnham's First Week Redraws the Map of UK Tech Governance<br>James Ball / Jul 29, 2026James Ball is a fellow at Tech Policy Press.<br>Britain's Prime Minister Andy Burnham is shown the driver's area on a FirstGroup bus at the bus station during a visit to Bath, England, Wednesday July 22, 2026. (Toby Melville/Pool Photo via AP)
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The United Kingdom has a new prime minister, in the shape of former Manchester major Andy Burnham—and that prime minister has had an energetic first week in office.<br>Burnham has announced a pledge to end street homelessness, introduced several measures to help the cost of living crisis, and opened a second prime ministerial headquarters—named Number 10 North—in Manchester. His priorities, he says, are focusing on cost of living, devolving power to the UK’s regions, and tackling a long-running crisis on the funding of social care.<br>On the surface, few of these priorities seem to involve tech policy, especially in contrast to former Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s proclaimed focus on growth, which he repeatedly said he believed would rely in part on artificial intelligence. Behind the headlines, though, Burnham has significantly reshaped the UK government’s technology policy even in his first week in office—in ways that have divided initial expert reaction.<br>The most conspicuous policy shift to date was Burnham’s decision to fully abandon plans to introduce a digital ID system to the UK. Starmer had already walked back plans for such IDs to be mandatory, and to be required during employment checks—a policy Burnham had publicly opposed at the time—but was still rolling out unified digital ID across government services, without the element of compulsion.<br>Number 10 announced the scheme was now fully scrapped, and funds intended for digital ID would instead be used to help fund a tax cut on electricity bills, which in turn prompted controversy as former minister Darren Jones revealed the digital ID scheme had never been costed in the first place.<br>While the digital ID story was the one that cut through with the media, the most significant shifts in the longer term were structural: as he appointed his first cabinet, Burnham scrapped the UK’s Department of Science, Innovation, and Technology (DSIT), a department created just three years previously by Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.<br>DSIT represented an attempt to bring science and technology to the UK’s Cabinet table without being filtered through the lens of another department’s priorities, be that business, education, or culture. While the department was well-regarded in many quarters, and had amassed civil servants with real expertise in its field, it was not without its critics.<br>“Has DSIT been an unqualified success?” Gavin Freeguard, a former civil servant and founder of the State of the Future thinktank, asked himself rhetorically before listing its problems. “No. Low morale, perpetual restructuring, leadership questions…slow progress in key policy areas, in hoc to US big tech/AI hype.”<br>An official ministerial statement issued after the decision to redistribute DSIT’s functions clarified that the intent was to embed science and technology policy across the government, rather than risk it becoming siloed.<br>“This move recognises that technology and innovation are not separate sectors of our economy – they are the foundation of all future industry, culture, and public service delivery,” noted the statement from Baroness Angela Smith, leader of the House of Lords.<br>Burnham has also promoted Kanishka Narayan, formerly the junior minister overseeing AI policy, to attend Cabinet—though not with the status of a fully fledged cabinet minister—to signal the continued importance of AI policy to the new administration.<br>Our content delivered to your inbox.<br>Join our newsletter on issues and ideas at the intersection of tech & democracy
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Alongside that, several policy functions relating to AI are to be incorporated into a new central government department—the Office for the Prime Minister and the Cabinet, right at the heart of government. Ostensibly, this signals that AI policy will be a high priority of the new administration, but some who have looked at the details have expressed concern as to the practicalities.<br>Any reorganization of government departments typically causes delays and confusion as personnel wait to find out who they now work for, to physically move offices, to get their new email addresses, and so on. One digital policy consultant who works closely with the government, who asked not to be named for that reason, said he had given up on getting any work done before September or October at the earliest, “while everyone shuffles the deckchairs.”<br>There are substantive concerns, too. The UK set up the Government Digital Service (GDS) in 2011, which had...