About David Willetts

He tries to straddle the two cultures which are a result of early specialisation in English education. He serves as a trustee of the Booker Prize and was Chair of the British Science Association.

Throughout his career, he has been sustained by his wife Sarah Butterfield, who he first met when she was a student at Oxford’s Ruskin School of Art. They have two children.

After being elected Member of Parliament, David Willetts served on the Social Security Select Committee. He joined the Whips Office in 1994, becoming a Lords Commissioner of HM Treasury and Treasury Whip in 1995, and then Paymaster General in the Cabinet Office. His pamphlet Civic Conservatism, published in 1994, is still cited by many Conservatives as an important influence on their thinking. He was in charge of the drafting of the 1997 Conservative Manifesto. At the same time, he wrote a Penguin Election paperback Why Vote Conservative?, a question which, it became clear, many voters were indeed asking.

David Willetts was heavily involved in local constituency campaigns. The notoriously noisy A27 running through the middle of Havant and Emsworth was eventually resurfaced with a new quieter material. He promoted business investment and saw the site which had been occupied by an IBM manufacturing plant become a thriving business park. The unsightly incinerator in Langstone was removed – even though it was a useful navigational aid for yachts in the Solent. He was active in tackling the social problems on the large Leigh Park council estate, which returned its first Conservative councillors. He and his wife actively support the local branch of Home Start. He raised funds for local charities by swimming the Solent from Ryde to Gosport in continuous front crawl in a respectable time of 2 hours 8 minutes. He still lives in Havant and swims through the year in the sea off Hayling Island.

David Willetts wrote widely on economic and social policy as well as serving in the Shadow Cabinet. His knowledge of demography led to his being invited to serve on the Global Aging Commission and he published Old Europe? Demographic Change and Pension Reform, which was considered to be more interesting than its title would suggest. The Conservative Conference in Birmingham in 2008 prompted Conservatives in Birmingham, an opportunity to celebrate the political significance of the city where he was born and brought up: it led to a memorable taxi ride around Birmingham with Evan Davis broadcast on the Today Programme.

He served for over four years as minister for universities and science in the Coalition Cabinet. He worked alongside Vince Cable, the Secretary of State, for whom he has enormous respect, and they made the Coalition work in a major Department of State. The changes to the financing of higher education were highly controversial but did put the finances of England’s universities on a better footing, whilst at the same time leading a shift in their culture towards focusing more on the student’s academic experience. He published a pamphlet, Robbins Revisited, to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Robbins report. It argued that there was still a case for the further expansion of higher education, and it was followed by the important announcement in the Autumn Statement of 2013 that numbers of students at English universities would be uncapped. This will prove to be one of the great social reforms of the Coalition Government.

As science minister, David Willetts worked with the Chancellor to secure a ring fence protecting science spending (which covers all research including humanities and social sciences) from substantial cuts. He also achieved a substantial boost in spending on science capital – and linked it to participation in programmes to promote diversity in science. He pushed forward open access to research publications. He promoted British roles in key international science research programmes such as the Square Kilometre Array and led the plan for a substantial part of its research to be undertaken in South Africa, making it the biggest ever science project in sub-Saharan Africa. He created the first major public fund supporting research collaboration with developing countries, the Newton Fund involving links with countries from India to Mexico. He hosted meetings of G7 Science ministers and brought to Oxford a major meeting of the Carnegie group of Science ministers and advisers.

He boosted British activities in Space and took Britain into the European Space Agency’s manned flight programme, securing a mission to the International Space Station for Tim Peake. He negotiated with ESA its creation of its first major UK base at Harwell. He was voted by Global Bio in 2012 the public official who had done most for life sciences in the past year because of his work on the UK Government’s life sciences strategy.

Drawing on expert advice, he identified Eight Great Technologies which merited public support on the long journey from the lab to the marketplace: this was followed by a substantial £600m investment in them from the Chancellor. Despite not being a scientist, he just about rose to the challenge of being asked by Jeremy Paxman live on Newsnight to define the Higgs Boson.

Since standing down from the House of Commons, he has taken on a wide range of new responsibilities with cross-party significance. He has joined the Advisory Council of the President of the Royal Society, and was a trustee of the Science Museum. He co-chairs the Anglo-Italian Pontignano Conference.

He serves on the Board of the Biotech Growth Trust, of Tekcapital plc, of Thames Holdings Ltd, of SatixFy Communications Ltd, of Synbioven Ltd and chairs GenIP plc. He is a member of the Council of the Institute for Fiscal Studies and an Honorary Governor of the Ditchley Foundation. He writes a fortnightly column for Conservative Home. He was short-listed for the award of the Peer with the greatest positive impact but lost out to the Archbishop of Canterbury. He continues to write and lecture.