Timpson boss and Covid adviser Patrick Vallance join Keir Starmer’s government

Keir Starmer has appointed Timpson boss James Timpson and former chief scientific adviser to the government Patrick Vallance as junior ministers after Labour’s historic election victory.

Timpson, chief executive of his father’s Timpson Group, will be Minister of State for prisons, parole and probation.

Vallance, who became well known for his television briefings during the Covid-19 pandemic, will be a Minister of State for science in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. Both will be made peers.

Timpson’s key cutting to dry cleaning business is known for employing ex-convicts in a bid to rehabilitate them, while he himself has been chair of the Prison Reform Trust since 2016. Timpson was previously chair of the Employers Forum for Reducing Re-offending until 2016.

He was also chair of the Employment Advisory Board, a network established to help prison leavers find work, and received an OBE in 2011 for services to training and employment for disadvantaged people.

Under Theresa May, Timpson was one of five co-chairs of a government body that advised the prime minister on how to create the best conditions for businesses to thrive after Brexit. 

Vallance served as chief scientific adviser from April 2018 to April 2023 and prior to that worked at pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline. He was knighted in 2022 for his service during the pandemic.

Vallance has previously backed Labour’s flagship manifesto pledge to set up a publicly-owned energy firm.

Earlier this year, he suggested in The Times that Labour’s plans for Great British Energy, which also aims to drive Net Zero policies, could be “done fast”.

The former adviser also took aim at Rishi Sunak for slowing down the implementation of Net Zero policies.

He wrote: “If we choose to go slowly others will provide the answers and we will ultimately end up buying the solutions.”

He added: “I am often asked which of Britain’s many pressing public policy challenges need a vaccine-style approach.

“I believe that one such priority is the urgent need to end the era of excessive carbon emissions, high energy bills and energy insecurity by accelerating the net zero transition to clean, homegrown energy.

“With a determined effort using currently available technologies and those that are close to being deployable, a clean power system by 2030 is achievable.”