The new division will also oversee the Online Safety Bill, which has suffered significant delays due to arguments between various factions within the ruling party.

Delivering for Davos and not the British people.

Conservative party forgot who elected them.

" Conservative party forgot who elected them. "

They haven't.

They're serving that particular group of knuckle dragging coffin dodgers rather well.

Don't forget the people that paid them

Obvious thing coming not made in the current re-org. The role of the "new" Energy and Net Zero quango is virtually identical to the stated remit of Ofgem.

Given recent performance I would not be surprised to see the latter subsumed into the former.

Ofgem is part of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, so yes it will be transfered over to the new Energy department.

Whose idea actually was it? Did someone leave a draft manifesto paper in the Westminster photocopier again?

All talk!

(1) UK GDP growth has been pathetic for thirty years (doubling, so 2.5% per annum -- much less if you allow for inflation)

(2) Almost zero investment in semiconductors right now (when TSMC and others are investing around $100 billion in seven fabs in Arizona)

(3) The former UK car industry is 100% owned overseas (and some of the manufacturing is also heading in that direction)

(4) About futures -- a large proportion of the fees earned by UK universities come from foreign students (notably China)

(5) And about #3 and #4, there's no strategy at all to foster local knowledge which could drive local economic development

For item #1 see link: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/gdp-growth-annual

If you want a look at REAL GROWTH, and REAL TRANSFORMATION, then take a look at this graph from the Economist (January 21, 2023):

Link: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2023/01/17/a-flurry-of-new-studies-identifies-causes-of-the-industrial-revolution

So....suppose there was a policy and a plan to get GDP growth up from around 0% to some healthier number:

(6) Investment in the education of UK residents

(7) Provision of tax shelters for GENUINE local investment

(8) Provision of DIS-INCENTIVES for outbound investment

(9) ....and so on.....

......would we be worried about the NHS?

.....but no......all talk.....rearranging the offices and chairs in Whitehall............

(1) Indian consultancies are doing very well in the UK, especially after Sunak's IR35 changes. Didn't he double his family wealth in the last couple of years?

(2) India is pumping billions in their new semiconductor industry now - we don't want to compete with them. Same with China. Wives will be upset if we did, if you know what I mean.

(3) (used to be) Our great brands are owned by India

(5) All tech jobs worth studying for are in Asia now.

>(2) Almost zero investment in semiconductors right now (when TSMC and others are investing around $100 billion in seven fabs in Arizona)

We were ahead of the curve on that one when we invested in Inmos and the Transputer.

I think I'm in the same boat as most MPs when it comes to demanding a semiconductor strategy though. Like ok, I could demand a fab plant capable of churning out 10m Z80A and 6502's a month, but.. I suspect there may be a limited market. If a fab plant costs >$10bn, then I'd rather hope it could produce lots of the stuff the market wants, and government has little real influence over. I have no idea how generic you can make a fab though, so one that's capable of doing a run to produce useful sized runs of whatever the market might want in 3-6 months. I guess a capability to produce cheap, generic SOC, memory and I/O could work, but then it's all the slice/dice/test/packaging gubbins that goes into converting sand to stuff people are willing to buy... Especially when we don't really have much of a domestic market designing and manufacturing products that need ICs.

There are still shortages of MCUs even though some fabs are peppered across the Europe they can't keep up.

Practically everything today needs an MCU and typically multiple ones per device.

They are not manufactured using "state of the art" technology, just good old 90nm or lower.

The problem with chip fabs, is that the sort of chemistry involved in high-purity silicon manufacturing is either very expensive or very dirty. You can't compete with the US and Far East on "expensive" and can't compete with China on "dirty", so we'd end up with the worst of both worlds: overpriced chips nobody will buy unless there is no other supply, and lots of nasty pollution.

Here we have one of the issues with net zero. The problem with a lot of manufacturing processes is they are energy and/or resource intensive. Both of those are bad for net zero. So we shift them overseas so the pollution is no longer on our books and then complain about the loss of knowledge.

I expect that the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero will have minimal budget, and the UK will subsequently fail at this due to the tug of war for funding between the 4 departments.

Besides this, then it will be more of the same - see the following parody video which sums up the Tories succinctly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jz5jUMVfJP4

It should be renamed "Department for Energy Security or Net Zero"

But then net zero is a con to shift emissions to the 'global south' and pretend we have done a good job.

Governments, no matter the colour, only care about the next few days or weeks and just want a quick fix. The only 'long term' they care about is how long they stay in power.

I'm not sure about that. Grant Shapps is the new Minister. He's one of the party bigwigs, so I doubt he would have accepted a demotion (from the old BEIS). The BBC reported that he was going to be treated as a key minister, one rung down from the four Great Offices of State. I assume the department will have to be adequately funded for all this to be the case.

I think Grant Shapps needs a big wig so he can be one of his personas

"Shapps's use of the names Michael Green, Corinne Stockheath and Sebastian Fox attracted controversy in 2012. He denied having used a pseudonym after entering parliament and, in 2014, threatened legal action against a constituent who had stated on Facebook that he had. In February 2015, he publicly said: "I don't have a second job and have never had a second job while being an MP. End of story."

However, in March 2015, Shapps admitted to having had a second job while being an MP, and practising business under a pseudonym. In his admission, he stated that he had "over-firmly denied" having a second job. In March 2015, Dean Archer, the constituent previously threatened with legal action by Shapps, threatened Shapps with legal action".

From : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant_Shapps

Somehow, Shapps is seen as credible now....

Splitting one department into 4 means 3 more sets of highly-paid ministerial posts for those who prove best at sucking up to the PM!

Don't forget those juicy ministerial pensions that they'll qualify for, even if they're in the post for just one day.

And... don't forget the medal. They are proposing to give MP's et al medals. (and a nice big handshale too, for.... failure, because they lost their seats)

@WonkoTheSane

And yet I dare you to try and make the argument for smaller government and less government interference. People lose their minds

My interpretation of that, is that is has to do more with what is the intent of less government in the specific scenario being discussed.

If you look at energy security and competition, Ofgem failed, yet less government in that area would have meant a greater mess.

I think people want governments to be capable, and do the right thing for the country, not force ideology upon people, which is detrimental to the country.

Maybe these extra departments will work for the country. Yet, our isolation due to brexit is not helping at all.

...make sure the UK is the most innovative economy in the world

I'd like some of whatever he's smoking please.

"drive the innovation that will deliver improved public services, create new and better-paid jobs and grow the economy."

#brexit

You couldn't make this shit up.

Shit like that gets made up all the time.

We are innovative, the list of things that smart people in the UK have invented is long.

That most of those inventions or technologies have then been left to wither and then be bought by foreign companies is actually the critical problem.

The UK is utterly incapable of looking long term on anything. It is partly political, too many see-saw changes, even if the same party is in power and short term returns that investors demand.

I agree we are innovative, but the world has changed.

The scope of technology is so wide, that new discoveries are the slither in that range. Whereas before a CPU design and IP is still significantly relevant, new discoveries are not the significant world changing events they once were.

Since Brexit, the attitude of the Tories is that we can do everything, and lead the world. We can't. We don't have the resources, many countries are at the same level as us or further ahead, and the short termism (as highlighted by you) denies us success.

We have to collaborate with other countries, but that approach is seen as contrary to the ideology.

I mean, you can't say whether the government has delivered on its promises* if it changes what it's measuring half-way through. If you constantly change all the departments and projects around, nobody can demonstrate that they are getting nothing done.

It's an old trick, like the time they changed the way they measure child poverty year-on-year, so nobody could say for definite how many children are going hungry and point out the government's poor record.

*You can, the answer is always "no"

Wishi Washi Sunak - ensuring the hard working lowly populace receive a share of abso-bloody useless net zero anything, whilst Tory chums coin it in! T'was ever thus.

We need to replace him with strong and stable

Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT). .... Missed a treat there... If only Department for STI

The last time I went to the DSTI all I got was a prescription for the burning - nothing about science, or technology :-)

The government should also bundle Housing into that department.

I leave it to the advanced reader to decide where in the acronym it should sit.

>Department for STI

The WRX is fun, but I'm not sure it needs an entire dept

The problem is that Higher Education, that is Universities, come under the DfE, not the DSIT. They really should combine the two.

Department of Science, Higher Education, Innovation and Technology.

But most of the students in higher education don't do STEM so it should be under the department of culture, media and sport - and you might as well move science and industry under there as well