Michelle Donelan

Michelle Emma May Elizabeth Donelan (born 8 April 1984) is a British former politician. A member of the Conservative Party, she served as Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology from February 2023 to July 2024.

Donelan also held three other cabinet positions from 2020 to 2023 under prime ministers Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, and Rishi Sunak. She sat as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Chippenham in Wiltshire from 2015 until she left Parliament after unsuccessfully contesting the new Melksham and Devizes constituency at the 2024 election.

Early life Donelan was born in 1984 in Whitley, Cheshire, She decided to become a politician at the age of six, and later spoke at the Conservative Party Conference in Blackpool at the age of 15.

Donelan was educated at The County High School, Leftwich,

She was then selected as the prospective parliamentary candidate for Chippenham in February 2013.

Donelan served on the Education Select Committee between 2015 and 2018.

Before the 2016 referendum, Donelan supported the UK remaining within the European Union.

Donelan was re-elected as MP for Chippenham at the snap 2017 United Kingdom general election with 54.7% of the vote and a majority of 16,630.

At the 2019 general election, Donelan was again re-elected, with a decreased vote share of 54.3% and a decreased majority of 11,288.

Whip and Junior Education Minister Donelan was appointed an assistant whip in 2018 and a government whip in July 2019. In September 2019, she was appointed parliamentary under-secretary for children to cover maternity leave for Kemi Badenoch.

In the February 2020 cabinet reshuffle, she became Minister of State for Universities. , her responsibilities included universities

In the 2021 cabinet reshuffle, her role was renamed Minister of State for Higher and Further Education, with the added right to attend cabinet. She was also sworn into the Privy Council.

During her tenure in the Department for Education, she campaigned for freedom of speech in Universities.

Secretary of State for Education On 5 July 2022, in the wake of a large number of resignations from the second Johnson ministry over Boris Johnson's handling of the Chris Pincher scandal and other political scandals, Donelan, who was then serving as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Skills, Further and Higher Education (previously named Minister of State for Higher and Further Education during her tenure) was promoted to Secretary of State for Education, after her predecessor Nadhim Zahawi was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer.

On 7 July 2022, after less than 36 hours in the role, Donelan resigned as Secretary of State, writing that Johnson had "put us in an impossible position". She was the shortest-serving cabinet member in British history, her tenure being shorter than Earl Temple's four-day tenure as Foreign Secretary in 1783. Following reports she would receive severance pay at Secretary of State level despite her short tenure, Donelan refused this payment.

2022 Conservative Party leadership elections Donelan initially backed Nadhim Zahawi in the July-September 2022 Conservative Party leadership election, later backing Penny Mordaunt following Zahawi's elimination from the contest. After Mordaunt's elimination she endorsed eventual victor Liz Truss. After Truss resigned, she endorsed Rishi Sunak in the October 2022 leadership election.

Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport

Donelan was appointed Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport on 7 September 2022 by then prime minister Liz Truss. Rishi Sunak succeeded Truss following the October 2022 Conservative Party leadership election, and Donelan retained her position in the cabinet.

She stated in January 2023 that she was against returning the Parthenon marbles to Greece, on the grounds that restitution would "open a can of worms" and be a "dangerous road to go down." In the same month, Donelan cancelled a plan to privatise Channel 4 that had been announced by Nadine Dorries under Boris Johnson's premiership.

Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology

In a reshuffle of Sunak's cabinet on 7 February 2023, Donelan was appointed to the newly created role of Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology.

It was announced on 21 April 2023 that during her maternity leave, Donelan would be temporarily replaced as Secretary of State by Chloe Smith. She returned to her ministerial role on 20 July 2023 after three months of ministerial maternity leave.

Donelan's portfolio in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology included the controversial Online Safety Act 2023. Under her leadership, the measure was amended and completed its passage through both Houses of Parliament.

In April 2023, following the release of the GPT-4 large language model, Donelan announced that the UK would spend £100 million in initial funding for the Foundation Model Taskforce, modelled on the success of the COVID-19 Vaccine Taskforce, which would seek to ensure the responsible development of advanced artificial intelligence models and mitigate the risks. Soon after, hundreds of AI experts including Geoffrey Hinton, Yoshua Bengio, and Demis Hassabis signed a statement acknowledging AI's risk of extinction. Tech entrepreneur Ian Hogarth, who warned about the race to "God-like AI" and urged governments to intervene with significant regulation, was later named chair of the taskforce.

Donelan announced in November that the taskforce would become the AI Safety Institute. In the same month, the inaugural AI Safety Summit was held at Bletchley Park, which resulted in almost 30 countries, including the United States and China, signing a declaration calling for international cooperation to mitigate the risks posed by AI. In April 2024, Donelan and US commerce secretary Gina Raimondo signed an agreement between the UK and US AI Safety Institutes, to allow them to work together on testing advanced AI models.

Libel settlement In October 2023, in her role as science minister, Donelan wrote to the head of UKRI (the body which directs government funding to research and innovation) suggesting that two academics recently appointed to a UKRI advisory group had expressed sympathy for Hamas and shared extremist views. Over 2,500 academics signed an open letter condemning Donelan's accusation as an attack on academic freedom.

In March 2024, Donelan publicly retracted the allegations and deleted the October tweet. One of the academics, Kate Sang of Heriot-Watt University, had commenced a libel action against Donelan, who was represented by the government legal service. According to Sang's lawyer, Donelan had based her allegations on a misleading press release from the Policy Exchange lobby group. Donelan's department paid compensation of £15,000 to Sang, plus legal costs. Donelan also apologised to the second appointee. Sang's lawyer said "It is extraordinary that a minister should be guided by a lobby group into making serious false allegations about private citizens without doing the first piece of due diligence." In addition, UKRI spent £15,000 on the investigation and £8,280 on legal advice.

Parliamentary Candidate for the new Melksham and Devizes constituency In May 2023, Donelan announced she would be contesting at the next general election the Melksham and Devizes constituency, where she lived, as the boundaries of her Chippenham seat had been redrawn. When the election took place in July 2024, she was defeated by Brian Mathew of the Liberal Democrats.

Post-parliamentary career Following her defeat at the 2024 general election, Donelan has worked as a freelance advisor.

Personal life Donelan is married to Tom Turner, whose family's procurement company Stronghold Global won government contracts to supply PPE to NHS hospitals, Covid testing sites and universities during the pandemic. She announced that she was pregnant in December 2022, and went on maternity leave from April to July 2023.

Honours She was appointed a member of the Privy Council on 20 September 2021, invested via video link at Balmoral Castle.