Success in government, like reputation in business, takes time to establish but can be ruined in an instant. The Department for Science Innovation and Technology, a wholly new ministry established in 2023 by Rishi Sunak, was well on the way to becoming a rare government success. Now it has been abolished, overnight, by Andy Burnham. Compared to venerable government departments like the Treasury and Home Office, it is the departmental equivalent of Liz Truss, briefly occupying an important berth but then dispatched without ceremony. But unlike Liz Truss, its departure is much mourned.
I defy Claude or ChatGPT to detect anything approaching a sensible pattern in this mess
Sunak established the department to make the government focus more on technology policy, and in particular, the march of artificial intelligence. It was a prescient decision by a consistently underrated prime minister. Britain is one of the world’s leading AI nations, both in terms of research and AI start-ups. While we cannot compete with the vast resources of China and America, we are, like our football team, plucky but clear bronze medallists.
In its short tenure, the new department helped tech-minded mandarins establish this country as the most forward-thinking nation in the world on AI policy. Our AI Security Institute is regarded as the leading centre of expertise on AI safety (the Americans turned to the Security Institute when Anthropic’s high-risk Mythos model required testing). The nascent Sovereign AI fund, which DSIT created, is providing much-needed capital for emerging British companies. And DSIT was showing genuine imagination in science spending – sponsoring the building of the UK’s largest super-computer.
But now thanks to Andy Burnham’s need to appease his allies, DSIT has been turned into a shambles from which favoured ministers are plucking juicy spoils. Lisa Nandy, the Culture Secretary, and Jonathan Reynolds, the Business Secretary, both wanted to get some tech glamour back for their departments. They haggled over who could absorb DSIT into their orbit and grab the glory. Burnham, as may become his hallmark, split the difference and broke the department up.
Into this unseemly war of ministerial egos, Antonia Romeo, the head of the civil service, saw an opportunity to assert greater control of the AI agenda. So now AI policy will sit in the Cabinet Office, under Romeo’s watchful eye. She will use it to drive the adoption of AI by mandarins across all departments. But, confusingly and chaotically, at the same time, the Government Digital Service, which is meant to make all government departments digital-friendly, will now sit in the Department of Culture. So if you are having trouble applying for your passport, speak to Lisa Nandy. If you want to introduce a chat bot in the Passport office, speak to Romeo.
The confusion doesn’t end there. Overall, AI policy will sit in the Cabinet Office. But policies to protect young people online will sit in DCMS. This division institutionalises the tension between those who see AI as a boon for growth and those who fear its impact on individual well-being. Resolving those trade-offs should be the work of a coherent team under a single, informed, accountable, cabinet minister. That was DSIT under Liz Kendall.Now the clear leadership the sector needs is gone.
And it gets worse. If you actually want to see increased funding for research on AI, you have to speak to Jonny Reynolds, who has taken the chunky pure science budget from DSIT into his sprawling and ill-formed business department.
Don’t be fooled by the appointment of an ‘AI minister’ around the cabinet table. The individual concerned, Kanishka Narayan, is a genuinely very talented guy. But he’s been set up to fail. You only get things done in Whitehall with a single, coherent, department behind you. Ministers ‘attending’ cabinet generally have less actual power than Larry the cat, who’s also ‘in the room’ for these discussions and is, similarly, there mainly for decoration and to be patted on the head.
Narayan has already been cut out of effective control. His job will ‘straddle’ the Cabinet Office and business department, but not DCMS. And just to underline his relative impotence and the general confusion, the newly-created Office of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (‘OPMC’ – an Antonia Romeo creation) now has an AI taskforce and a prime ministerial adviser on AI.
AI’s large language models work on the basis that they detect patterns in human activity and can then make sense of them. I defy Claude or ChatGPT to detect anything approaching a sensible pattern in this mess.
It’s not as though this Whitehall chaos is cost-free for the rest of us. Setting up and standing down a government department costs money. It wastes a catastrophic amount of time and causes endless confusion, at a time when the government is meant to be getting on with the job.
Abolishing DSIT also sends the wrong signal. Sunak recognised that a ‘digital department’ broadcast to our entrepreneurs and the wider world that the UK was a serious base for technology, and was maintaining its ambition to continue to be a world-leader. Signals are important. Back in the day, David Cameron established Tech City, a public/private partnership. It attracted attention and had a multiplier effect. At that time, the Department of Culture was gradually taking on digital responsibilities, and it had long been recognised that at some point government needed a digital department. Now that has gone into reverse.
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