When Andy Burnham scrapped the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology in his first Cabinet reshuffle as Prime Minister, the story that ran everywhere was the shape of the thing: a three-year-old department folded into a reformed business department, with digital functions peeled off to culture and media, and artificial intelligence elevated to a new perch inside the Cabinet Office. What’s had far less scrutiny is what happens administratively when a department with a research budget above £9 billion and responsibility for dozens of arm’s-length bodies is dissolved overnight, and how much of that detail is still unconfirmed more than a month later.
DSIT was established in February 2023 under Rishi Sunak, bringing quantum computing, AI, engineering biology, semiconductors and telecoms together with life sciences and green technology under one Cabinet-level department. Burnham’s move, announced as he formed his government after becoming the UK’s seventh prime minister in a decade, folded most of that back into a renamed Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade, led by returning Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds. Digital government functions moved to a renamed Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport; the AI Security Institute (formerly the AI Safety Institute) moved into the new Office for the Prime Minister and the Cabinet; and a new Cabinet-level AI minister, Kanishka Narayan, was appointed to sit across both. Both Liz Kendall, DSIT’s outgoing Secretary of State, and Patrick Vallance, its Science Minister, stepped down before the department’s abolition was formally announced. pharmaphorum
The reaction from the sector was immediate and largely hostile. Ian Hogarth, chair of the AI Security Institute, argued that reorganisations of this kind typically distract departments for a year, and questioned the case for doing it to a department that had visibly delivered, citing ARIA, the AI Security Institute, the AI Hardware Plan and the Sovereign AI Fund as evidence. Royal Society president Paul Nurse raised similar concerns on BBC Radio 4, warning the change would be disruptive and pressing the government to keep a clear line between the business and trade side of the new department and the science side. techUK and the Startup Coalition sent a joint letter warning the move was “the wrong change at the wrong time,” cautioning that splitting up the AI Security Institute, the Sovereign AI Fund, the Government Digital Service and UK Research and Innovation would slow momentum in a sector growing at ten per cent a year. Times Higher EducationTech Times
That criticism has largely been reported. What hasn’t had the same coverage is the paper trail since, which shows Parliament itself still waiting on basic answers.
In the Commons, Dame Chi Onwurah, chair of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, wrote to the Cabinet Office, DCMS and DBIST on 3 August asking three things: whether media reports on where former DSIT teams have landed are accurate, when the transfer of those teams will be finalised, and when the government will confirm the new ministerial portfolios. Onwurah noted that two weeks after the new government took office, ministerial portfolios had still not been announced and it remained unclear where civil servants who previously worked in the department would end up. She also asked whether dedicated ministers for digital infrastructure and online safety would continue to exist at all. The letter set out, in more granular terms than most of the news coverage managed, exactly which bodies are now in administrative limbo: the UK Space Agency, the Office for Life Sciences, sponsorship of UK Research and Innovation, ARIA, the Met Office, the National Physical Laboratory and the Intellectual Property Office, alongside the government’s national technology adviser and chief scientific adviser, all nominally moving to DBIST without a confirmed timetable. As of early August, the expected new science minister, Chris McDonald, had not been formally confirmed by DBIST. Onwurah has said her committee will examine the plans in detail when Parliament returns in September. Times Higher EducationResearch Professional News
The Lords have pressed harder on the AI and research funding side specifically. In a Private Notice Question on 21 July, Lord Clement-Jones asked the government directly what assessment it had made of the abolition’s effect on the AI Security Institute, the Sovereign AI Fund, the Government Digital Service and UK Research and Innovation. Responding for the Cabinet Office, Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent confirmed the broad destinations: the AI Security Institute into the Office for the Prime Minister and the Cabinet, UKRI and the Sovereign AI Fund into DBIST, and the Government Digital Service into DCMS. She also confirmed UKRI’s £9.22 billion research and development budget for 2026-27 would continue to be split across its existing three funding categories: basic curiosity-driven research, foundational research, and research aimed at strategic government and economic priorities.
Not every question got that level of clarity. Lord Vaizey pressed on the Sovereign AI Fund specifically, noting that only £100 million of the £500 million announced in April had been allocated, and asked for a guarantee that the remaining £400 million would be committed within two years. The minister’s response confirmed the fund would sit in DBIST and said she had “nothing to suggest” the government wouldn’t spend the full amount, which is a statement of intent rather than a timetable or a guarantee. Viscount Camrose separately asked who actually owns AI policy now that it sits across DBIST, the Cabinet Office and a dedicated AI minister, and what a newly mentioned AI taskforce would do that those bodies don’t already cover; the answer described a coordinating role for the Cabinet Office without resolving the underlying overlap. Lord Krebs asked for reassurance that basic discovery science funding wouldn’t be quietly eroded during the reorganisation; the minister repeated the £9.22 billion topline figure without addressing the allocation question directly. UK Parliament
None of this amounts to evidence that funding has been cut or that any specific programme is at risk. What it shows is a gap between the confidence of the government’s public framing, that this is a coherent, agile restructuring, and the amount of operational detail actually confirmed to Parliament. Two committees, in two Houses, asking the same basic questions about where money and staff have gone is not a normal state for a machinery-of-government change that the government itself has treated as settled. Until DBIST, DCMS and the Cabinet Office publish the transition timetable Onwurah has asked for, the practical status of a £9bn research budget and the agencies built to spend it remains, in the committee’s own words, unconfirmed.