UK creates PM AI Taskforce chaired by Lord Vallance

The UK government announced a new PM AI Taskforce, based in the Office for the Prime Minister and Cabinet and reporting directly to Prime Minister Andy Burnham, marking the first time AI had been given that level of formal standing inside the machinery of UK government. Lord Vallance, the former Government Chief Scientific Adviser who had chaired the Covid-19 Vaccines Taskforce, was appointed chair; the government explicitly modelled the new body on that Taskforce, which it credited with cutting through normal bureaucratic delay to deliver results quickly. AI Minister Kanishka Narayan was named to lead the Taskforce day to day and to attend Cabinet.

The Taskforce’s stated remit combined two things governments had until then tended to treat separately: driving AI adoption across public services, with a goal of transforming how government itself operates, and overseeing the AI Security Institute, the body responsible for evaluating frontier models’ dangerous capabilities. Announcing the appointment, the government said the aim was to make sure AI “works for everyone” as it reshapes the economy.

The move followed a broader pattern in UK AI policy through 2026 of consolidating oversight functions closer to the centre of government rather than leaving them distributed across departments, and of pairing safety evaluation with an explicit growth and adoption mandate rather than treating the two as being in tension.