Neo - Starcadia by Gil Sherman and Lenka Della-Porta. Photograph John Davies.
The UK is widely believed to have a business department, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS). However, something which has gone largely unnoticed is that slowly, but steadily, a new business department is emerging and one with a remit that threatens to overshadow the current incumbent.
Once mocked as the Ministry of Fun, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has been acquiring portfolio after portfolio. In 2011 it took over responsibility for competition and policy issues in media, broadcasting, and telecoms. In 2015 it took over the data protection and digital economy brief, with Government data policy following in 2018, complementing its existing work in the cultural, creative and sporting sectors.
A remit focussed on digital, data and the creative industries is arguably likely to be more important for the UK’s economic future than many of the Business department’s more sluggish traditional sectors. Indeed, the DCMS’ own statistical releases proudly trumpet how much faster its sectors’ are growing than the UK economy as a whole. A remit that includes the UK’s film, music and theatre and sporting sectors also provides the Department with a reflective glamour that is perhaps lacking in more utilitarian parts of government.
In comparison, the Business Department has schizophrenically lurched from identity crisis to identity crisis. The vexed question at the heart of its remit as to whether it should pick winners, support losers or get out of the way of British business remains as yet unresolved. Major aspects of the Department’s work, and key inputs to business, have also been hived off only to return (Energy) or been expanded only to be taken away again (Higher Education).
All of this has been reflected in a succession of different departmental names, none of which has stuck. The Department having previously been: The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR), the Department for Productivity, Energy and Industry (PEI) - a name which lasted a week - and the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). By contrast, when the then Department for Culture, Media and Sport acquired the Digital brief, the Department’s branding remained stable as ‘DCMS’ despite the addition of the extra D.
Of course, DMCS’ time in the sun may not last. The Department is despite recent changes, by Whitehall standards, still relatively small in comparison to other departments. It too has the challenge of a varied portfolio ranging from fast growing tech unicorns to free museums. Sorting out issues relating to large US tech companies may well prove to be an onerous and distracting task. The UK’s most important economic department, the Treasury, may eventually look less favourably on having two business departments and there has also been loose talk of a Boris super ministry replacing multiple departments. For now, though, fun is a serious business.