From DTI to BERR to BIS: Government creates mega-department

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'.