Is DBIS the DTI without energy?

At first sight, it looked like the effect of the UK government’s latest reshuffle of departments was to reassemble the old Department of Trade and Industry. Just two years ago the DTI disappeared into the Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform, the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills and the Department of Energy and Climate Change. So, you could almost see the new Department for Business, Innovation and Skills as a DTI lacking energy.

Far from it, says Lord Drayson, Minister for Science and Innovation, when we Twitter the accusation at him. “Science & Innovation are now at the heart of the new department,” he tweeted back. “Focus now is on the high tech growth agenda.”

The government spells out the new department in an announcement from Number 10. The senior minister in what we will probably have to call DBIS is Lord Peter Mandelson, previously Secretary of State for DTI before he shuffled off to Brussels and the House of Lords.

DBIS, the announcement tells us, “combines BERR’s strengths in shaping the enterprise environment, analysing the strengths and needs of the various parts of British industry, building strategies for industrial strength and expertise in better regulation with DIUS’s expertise in maintaining world class universities, expanding access to higher education, investing in the UK’s science base and shaping skills policy and innovation through bodies such as the Technology Strategy Board”.

In his own take on DBIS, Drayson says “The science ring-fence is safe and sound and the innovation agenda will further benefit from this move.” Sadly, this is unlikely to convince those academics who think that they, and they alone, should decide what goes on in universities, and that they can safely dismiss the views of anyone not intimately involved in doing research.

The last time we talked to people in the old departments, just a month or so ago, in DIUS at least, Drayson’s previous home, they were still trying to bring coherence to the previous witches brew of responsibilities they had inherited two years ago.

We can probably assume that for the time being at least, anyone with dealings with the UK government on innovation matters will see little effect of the changes. After all, even some of those old DTI email addresses still work, although links to web sites never really caught up with the split into BERR and DIUS.

The announcement of the new department does not say if the remit of DBIS includes rearranging the canvas covered collapsible seating on the decks of large ‘unsinkable’ ocean-going liners at risk of hitting an iceberg.