Kanishka Narayan becomes the UK’s first cabinet-level AI minister
A junior brief becomes a cabinet seat as Andy Burnham scraps DSIT and rewires Whitehall around artificial intelligence.
July 21, 2026 – 11:18 am
Image by: Kanishka Narayan ©House of Commons/Laurie Noble
Kanishka Narayan has become the first UK minister for artificial intelligence to sit at the cabinet table, a promotion that arrives as new prime minister Andy Burnham reshapes Whitehall around the technology.
Narayan, the MP for the Vale of Glamorgan and until this week a junior minister for AI and online safety, said Burnham had asked him to attend cabinet
“as minister for AI, a sign of his deep commitment to AI’s importance.”
The elevation coincides with the scrapping of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), the body that had steered Britain’s pro-innovation AI rules and its push for homegrown compute.
The reorganization folds a standalone science department, created less than two years ago, back into a broader economic ministry, a decision likely to be read as a bet that AI policy now belongs closer to the centre of government rather than in a specialist silo.
For Narayan, the job is less a change of subject than a change of altitude. He reached Parliament only in July 2024, winning the Vale of Glamorgan and becoming the first ethnic minority MP elected in Wales, before taking the AI and online safety brief that September.
His route there was unusually well suited to the file. After a spell in the civil service during the coalition government, he worked at the investment bank Lazard, studied for an MBA at Stanford, and spent time with the venture firm Atomico and the fintech investor Clocktower before running Labour’s tech policy.
That background has earned him a rare reputation among people who watch the sector closely.
Leo Ringer of Form Ventures described him as
“a minister whose understanding of his brief has been there from day one,” while Matt Clifford, a former government AI adviser, welcomed the move and said Narayan
“understands the scale and opportunity”
of the technology.
The in-tray is heavy. Britain has promised long-delayed legislation on the most powerful AI models, and ministers are still weighing how far to regulate without deterring the investment flowing into UK AI.
Questions over compute capacity, the safety of frontier systems, and the future of the AI growth zones meant to spread jobs beyond London now report, in effect, to a cabinet minister.