The new department is a merger of the Department for Innovation,
Universities and Skills (DIUS) and the Department for Business,
Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR). It is called the
Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS).
Former Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and
Regulatory Reform Peter Mandelson will head the expanded
department. He was given additional titles in the Government
reshuffle that created the new department. He has also been made
the First Secretary of State, effectively deputy prime minister,
and Lord President of the Council.
A Government statement said that the new department's "key role
will be to build Britain’s capabilities to compete in the global
economy".
"[The new department] 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," it said.
Mandelson said this week in a speech that he hoped to put
science and innovation at the heart of policy in the newly expanded
department.
"A new world is emerging, one on the edge of a new industrial
revolution that's driven by new technologies and the world's shift
to low-carbon, and where global competition will be even tougher,"
he said. "To fully realise our potential as a country, now is the
time that we need to define those comparative advantages that will
secure our global lead in this future. And our ability to maintain
and develop our strong science base through both applied and a
substantial element of fundamental curiosity-driven research, will
be essential to our long-term economic success."
David Lammy was the minister for intellectual property at DIUS
and he is listed as a minister of state in the new department,
though BIS has yet to make clear exactly what duties each minister
will have.
Mandelson came under fire this week from Conservative peers, who
warned that the merger would downgrade the interests of
universities and research in a department which, they said, would
naturally prioritise business interests.
Mandelson rejected the charge.
BERR was launched in 2007 as the new name for the Department of
Trade and Industry (DTI). The DTI had been rebranded before, in
2005, to become the Department for Productivity, Energy and
Industry (DPEI). Seven days later, ministers reverted to the name
DTI following criticism that it would be referred to as
'dippy'.
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