Scaleup powerhouse goals, chasing unicorns & immigration concerns - Michelle Donelan, tech secretary

Michelle Donelan, the tech secretary, discusses the government’s plan to make the UK a “scaleup powerhouse” and provides more detail on some of the policy support measures. The secretary of state answers questions about her goal to make the UK home to half of all European tech unicorns by 2030 and whether immigration policy is harming UK tech growth. Elsewhere, Donelan responds to concerns that scrapping parts of HS2 is a blow to regional tech growth, and is asked whether Fujitsu is still a trusted partner in the wake of the Post Office scandal.  

Donelan is the UK’s first secretary of state for science, innovation and technology. She was appointed to lead the department in February 2023 after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak spun it out of the Department for Digital, Culture Media and Sport, which Donelan led from September 2022. Her responsibilities include all things UK tech, from skills to regulation to R&D. Her department brought the Online Safety Bill into law and negotiated the UK’s post-Brexit re-entry into the Horizon Europe research programme. Donelan and her department organised the first global summit on AI safety, which brought international leaders and experts to Bletchley Park last November.