Last week Sir Patrick Vallance was appointed as the new Minister for Science. The appointment came as part of a popular move by the new government to bring outside expertise into departments. In Sir Patrick’s case, though, he has plenty of inside experience too. From 2018 to 2023, through Covid, he served as the Government Chief Scientific Adviser.
That period was an unprecedented time in so many ways, of course. But it was also remarkable for the astonishingly high public profile of government scientists. The GCSA really was, for the very first time, a genuine household name. And in that spirit, and in light of Sir Patrick’s renewed prominence, I want to talk about some essential but often under-recognised figures in Whitehall: so-called Chief Scientific Advisers (CSAs).
While Sir Patrick was the most senior CSA in government with a direct line to the PM, every Whitehall department now has their own individual CSA. They’re a resource for ministers and civil servants alike to make the most of science in their day-to-day work. So, what do these figures actually do? And how could the new government make better use of them?
What is a CSA?
The development of the CSA role is tightly bound up with the Ministry of Defence. The first ever departmental CSA in Whitehall, appointed all the way back in 1946, was in the MOD. And when the first GCSA was appointed by then-PM Harold Wilson in 1964, the man he chose – Sir Solly Zuckerman – was himself a former CSA in the MOD. With time, each department gradually added CSAs of their own. The Treasury proved the last holdout, belatedly appointing their own in 2011.
But what does a departmental CSA actually do? Well, for a really long answer, you can read 31 pages of guidance from the Government Office for Science (last updated in January 2020). This document explains the duties of CSAs and the civil servants that support them in great detail. It’s actually more interesting than it sounds.
A pithier summary can be found in a Reform paper I co-authored with former-Home Office CSA Professor Sir John Aston last year: ‘From sidelined to systemic: The role of Whitehall’s CSAs’. In that document, we pointed to four main functions that CSAs perform within their departments:
- Scientific expertise: explaining complex evidence to ministers and officials to support their decision-making processes.
- Research and engagement: helping departments conduct useful scientific research, while building links with relevant external scientific stakeholders.
- Scientific advice: helping embed scientific principles and practices into how departments take decisions on a day-to-day basis.
- System leadership and/or regulation: overseeing their department’s scientific ‘system’ and resources, whether as a more executive leader/manager or through rigorous external scrutiny of that system.
Underpinning this is what a report from the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee called the “primary essential characteristic of all CSAs”, their “standing and authority within the scientific community, nationally and internationally.” They are appointed, almost always from outside government, because they’re recognised as credible scientific leaders who can use their professional standing to build external networks and influence ministers within the system.
And yet, a consistent finding – both in our research and elsewhere – is that CSAs aren’t always sufficiently empowered to do this. While some departments, especially the MOD and Defra, have a strong culture of using scientific practices in their work and retain influential CSAs, others aren’t in the same position. The role varies considerably across Whitehall.
For evidence of this, let’s look at how often CSAs met with ministers. Returning to that comprehensive House of Lords report, it shows that the CSA in the Department for Work and Pensions then met ministers more than once a week. By contrast, the CSA in the Department for Transport managed just 4 meetings in an entire year. Other departments unhelpfully said only that such meetings were ‘regular.’
Frequency of CSA scheduled meetings with ministers
| Department | Number of meetings between CSAs and ministers in the past year |
| BIS | Regular |
| DCLG | In the course of duties |
| DCMS | Vacant |
| DECC | 20 |
| Defra | Regular and frequent |
| DfE | 16 |
| Dfid | 19 |
| DfT | 4 (up to May 2011) |
| DH | Weekly, if not daily |
| DWP | 68 |
| FCO | Regular |
| HMT | Regular |
| HO | 17 |
| MoD | Regular |
| MoJ | Regular |
And if we look at the seniority and salary of CSAs, the same picture emerges. In the Department for Health, the CSA could be expected to receive around £225,000-£229,999 per annum and be a Director General (SCS 2 – one grade below Permanent Secretary). In the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the CSA was a Director (one level below DG) paid just shy of £50,000. Even those of the same grade were paid wildly different amounts across departments – compare the Department for Education to the Home Office, for example.
Grades and salaries of CSAs
There are two important caveats here. First, as you’ll recognise from the department names, this report isn’t new – it comes from 2011. The specific numbers it includes are almost certainly no longer accurate. And secondly, some of this variation is natural – Whitehall departments differ in scope, size and responsibilities, so the CSA role will vary too. Flexibility has obvious benefits over one-size-fits-all.
But as we found in our research for Reform, even if the specific numbers may have changed, the picture is broadly the same. CSAs are highly influential in some places and weak in other departments, the variety in grade and salary persists too. Inconsistency is still a defining feature today and it means that some CSAs are underutilised within Whitehall.
Influence and independence
It’s worth briefly touching on the constitutional complexity of this position. More specifically, the implicit tension between influence and independence that every CSA faces.
On the one hand, a CSA’s role is partly about being a “licensed dissident” (according to the government guidance), providing robust challenge to departments and ministers using their expertise. On the other, the CSA’s job is to bring science into the policymaking process. And in practice, this often means being an important adviser to ministers, something which entails a much closer relationship than being a ‘dissident.’
We saw some of this tension during the pandemic. In those daily COVID-19 briefings led by Boris Johnson, Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance, the very presence of those scientists on the stage was about using their standing to reassure and educate the public. It suggested a deep closeness to the policymaking process, a consistent voice at the table.
But this, naturally, came at some cost. To those more critical of the government or more insistent on pure scientific independence, the risk was that this drifted too far away from a ‘licensed dissident’ role. Was influence gained through independence lost? In an appalling national crisis, I’d argue there’s a good case for the GCSA to approach their role in this way. But this highlights why CSAs are viewed as more than just regular civil servants. Their ‘allegiance’ to science and scientific principles implies a willingness to offer more challenge than the standard senior official. Getting that balance right is genuinely tricky.
In that 2011 Lords report, we saw CSAs themselves wrestle with this. Those cited in that report generally stressed their reluctance to ‘go public’ on policy disagreements. One said: “In my experience, there is no acceptance among ministers or Permanent Secretaries that such advice should be given publicly.” Another stated: “In the past, I used to speak very freely in public and I enjoyed giving frank views, but now I hold those views back more and express them very strongly within the Department, where I feel I am listened to and respected.”
They felt, broadly speaking, that going public was closer to the nuclear option. It’s the ultimate expression of the licensed dissident approach perhaps – one that was deemed appropriate when former GCSA Sir David King made a public intervention around climate change. But making public disagreements with ministers carries obvious risks: it undermines trust and would likely weaken a CSA’s future influence over policymaking as politicians try to keep them out of the room.
The case for CSAs
At their best, CSAs can offer impressive benefits to government. In the pandemic, having credible scientific experts accessible to policymakers helped them puzzle through the crisis. In peacetime, CSAs can help navigate the grinding, tricky policy challenges that Whitehall faces – accessing networks beyond government, educating policymakers about the latest evidence, and sharing information across the Whitehall-wide CSA network.
In our paper for Reform, Professor Aston and I talked about the importance of making sure CSAs aren’t just talented ‘lone operators’, mere figureheads within a department. Instead, they should be empowered as a ‘system leader’ (directly managing their department’s science system) or as a ‘system regulator’ (scrutinising that system, where it’s already high-performing and embedded in that department.) In other words, CSAs should be given the seniority and resources to build up scientific capabilities or – where they’re already in place – take on a strong challenge function to make sure they’re working as effectively as possible.
Now, I’m not going to pretend this is an election-winner. I doubt the public could name a single CSA. Would people even know former GCSA Patrick Vallance were it not for COVID-19 and those daily press conferences? While admirably qualified, it seems unlikely that Starmer would have appointed him as our new Minister for Science without that profile raising period.
Ministerial appointments aside, politicians of all stripes are obsessed with showing that they’re ‘deliverers’, that they can ‘get things done’ for the public. Properly empowered CSAs – with all the benefits they can bring – are one way to make Whitehall much more effective. And in a world we’re told is ever-more complex, being upended by AI and transformed by innovation of all kinds, empowering credible experts to help government navigate that reality can only be a good thing. CSAs should be at the centre of what Whitehall does, whatever our new government does going forward.
James Sweetland.
James Sweetland is a freelance researcher, writer and consultant who works on government reform, policing and tech policy.
The Constitution Society is committed to the promotion of informed debate and is politically impartial. Any views expressed in this article are the personal views of the author and not those of The Constitution Society.