Burnham moves to abolish DSIT as tech sector revolts

TL;DR:

• Andy Burnham has asked officials to draw up plans to abolish the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, redistributing its work across the business and culture departments.
• techUK and the Startup Coalition wrote to the incoming prime minister warning that a break-up would send a “terrible signal” to a sector growing at 10% a year.
• Digital rights groups pushed in the opposite direction on the same day, urging Burnham to cut the NHS’s Palantir contract and reduce reliance on US technology firms.

Andy Burnham took office on Monday having already asked officials to work up plans to abolish DSIT — the department housing the AI Security Institute, the Sovereign AI Fund, UK Research and Innovation and the Government Digital Service. Under the proposals, most science and technology policy would move to an enlarged Department for Business and Trade under Jonathan Reynolds, with parts going to a bolstered DCMS. Oversight of public sector AI would pass to the cabinet secretary, Antonia Romeo, rather than to a minister.

Nothing has been signed off, and some in the industry expect a rethink. Burnham is reported to be weighing a cabinet seat for an AI minister as a counterweight.

Industry lines up against it

The reaction was fast and near-uniform. techUK and the Startup Coalition wrote jointly to Burnham, arguing that DSIT “works because it brings researchers, AI practitioners, innovators and policymakers together in one department” and that dismantling it would slow work already under way. The UK Tech Cluster Group said the change would “create disruption at exactly the wrong moment”. Matt Clifford, AI adviser to both Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak, called it “a big mistake”, arguing that a reorganisation would consume senior officials’ attention “desperately needed for the actual substance”.

Dom Hallas of the Startup Coalition put the structural objection more bluntly: a merged business department “would mean British tech competing with British steel for attention”.

The other direction of travel

Not all the pressure runs the same way. ARTICLE 19, Open Rights Group and the Balanced Economy Project wrote to Burnham on his first day arguing that a break with “dominant Big Tech and AI monopolies” should be central to his premiership, calling for firmer competition enforcement and an end to the NHS’s Palantir deal. Their complaint is not that DSIT is being weakened but that it sat too close to US vendors — a critique that survives whichever department holds the brief.

Looking forward

Liz Kendall, the science secretary expected to be replaced, recently said the UK had roughly two years to establish a foothold in AI or have the technology “done to us”. That timeline sits awkwardly against a reorganisation the industry estimates would take six months. Monday afternoon’s cabinet appointments will show whether the plan survives contact with government.