I am willing to give one cheer for the disappearance of a whole government department, the Science, Innovation and Technology department. I would give more cheers if I thought things would be better and overheads were lower from the changes. I will be surprised if they do slim government as a result, as I suspect there will be the rebuilding of what it does and who does it through a complex redistribution of tasks and posts. The expanding Business department will be the main “winner”, gaining staff and work. Some activities will pass to DCMS.
The critics of the move claim this will mean less representation for science and technology in decision making. The supporters say all departments need to be alert to scientific and technology threats and opportunities. The government Scientists already operate across government depending on need, from the Government Office of Science. There will be a Minister for AI in the Cabinet Office.
The danger of these reorganisations is they incur substantial costs and divert energies away from the subject itself to the complications of the Whitehall power structures and musical chairs. It is difficult to point to what the outgoing Department has achieved. I asked recently that the Lords Minister set out what benefits we are getting from the government’s £3bn programme of introducing AI to its own processes, and what greater staff efficiencies it would generate. It was a friendly question giving the Minister the chance to explain how they were spending this large sum and what good it was doing. There was no reply, so presumably there was no briefing. The suspiciously round sums of the original announcement of AI money without precise programmes was always a concern. I thought now they were well into spending it they could tell us on what and how we will gain.Their inability to do so invites more questions about how this cash is splashed.
This change in the architecture of government to handle the most exciting scientific and technological developments now underway goes unexplained. It would be good to see what the plan for transfer is, how much it will cost and who will control it. I doubt they have worked all that out. Officials look for promotions or for a better deal and politicians lazily dismiss a whole department whilst wanting its work to live on elsewhere.Costs go up. No one is responsible for controlling them. In business if you scrap a department it is usually to take out cost and reduce functions. Government works by different rules which usually ensure reorganisation brings more staff and more cost. AI too in the public sector may do the same, impeding not advancing labour productivity.
July 28, 2026
After the Covid experience, a lot of us would like less “science” representation in decision making. But like you, I suspect this will not save money (or disastrous decision making).
Abolishing the Foreign Office would save us a few quid and make us a lot safer. Or just scrap the BBC licence fee. They’ve been busy telling everyone there’s a hose ban in our area, but check on the water company website today and what do you know…no ban! Everyone running around with watering cans and it’s just the Beeb”s climate alarm poppycock.
July 28, 2026
It’s small potatoes. A fundamental reorganisation and reduction in cost is required.
That will not happen. The worst case scenario is expensive consultants would be appointed to tell the government what it wants to hear – that the civil service does a great job and cuts would seriously damage it.
July 28, 2026
A new ‘death tax’ would address cost increases.
Burnham is a pleasant chap and you will be dead anyway.
July 28, 2026
Well less of the types of scientist that the governments tend to select, same with the economists and their climate scientists – they choose the ones that tell them what they want to hear.
More honest, independent and good scientist and engineers please like Feynman, Dyson, Happer, the Barrington Declaration people, Angus Dalgleish… types Must be some decent young ones somewhere coming through but perhaps not.
See the death of science book.
July 28, 2026
Perhaps it would be simpler to ban and get rid of all quangos, and make Ministers completely responsible for the management of their own departments.
July 28, 2026
Spot On
July 28, 2026
@Berkshire Alan
That is long overdue but no doubt that would mean a lot more staff and more sub-ministers.
July 28, 2026
Indeed but the last thing ministers want is that. They want others to blame and demand reform of whenever something goes wrong or better still blame the last government for the way they set up the Quangos and lack of money. Anyone but themselves.
July 28, 2026
Abolition of government would be step in the right direction. Endless interference and ever rising costs for less productivity.
July 28, 2026
It is clear to us tax payers what is going on. The Public Sector has just one objective. That objective is not to serve the public as the term Civil Servants would like to suggest. The Public Sector, organised and directed by the Unions is set up to be self serving. It has adopted a permanent left wing bias and will maintain that thanks to the prime influencer in that sector of society, the Unions.
The idea of saving tax payers money is unthinkable and simply does not enter into the minds of the Public Sector, the objective they have adopted thanks to the Union left political ideology is to extract ever more from the tax payer as a method of increasing their control. The unaffordability of ‘our Public Sector’ will simply get worse up and till the total collapse happens.
We are constantly shocked by yet more taxes being introduced to fund yet another ‘progressive’ priority, more tax demand on top of already record levels of taxation. The tax payers i.e. the Private sector are seen and have become the servants of the Public Sector in a complete reversal of what sustainable society should be doing.
The final redoubt of public protection the democratic process has been breeched. The Unions are now running political representation the results are and will continue to be dire for the tax payers.
July 28, 2026
Indeed they just want ever more ways to tax, fine and regulate everything we do while doing as little as they can get away with. But we are already past the point where higher tax rates merely suffocate the tax base and will actually reduce the tax take going forwards. A doom loop economy combined with a growth, growth, growth rain dance! Three more years to go and even after that it will take years to turn things round.
July 28, 2026
Good morning.
Hardly a “Bonfire of the Departments”, is it ? Just staff shuffled from one office to another. But then again, what minimal savings there might be can be spent propping up the, “Number 10 of the North”. And then there is the bus fare cap ? Again. Hardly a saving is it, given the rampant inflation we are all experiencing.
Of topic.
On my journey to work today, I noticed some “Tax the rich” flags flying. I wounder if Westminster Council will take them down ?
July 28, 2026
If government is intended to be run from the North as well, will MPs need an office and accommodation there as well as London and their constituency? How would Angela Rayner manage?
QUANGOs should be one of the easiest things to chop out if ministers knew what they were doing.
July 28, 2026
I envisage even more quangos being introduced during this governments tenure
July 28, 2026
And full duplication of security staff.
Is Heron House fully secure as a building so additional costs there.
What about an English Parliament in Manchester too?
July 28, 2026
Bloke
A recent article in the Sunday papers suggest that up to 7,000 civil servants will eventually work from No10 North.
The building is massive, and was gained at Huge cost to Manchester city Council, whom I guess will get rent from the Government for its use.
More taxpayer expense, their seems absolutely no transparency or limit at which it can be spent.
July 28, 2026
I wonder what evidence they have that the same people in different locations will make different decisions on the same problems?
This must be so, else why shift everybody to a back street in Manchester (unless the rent from central Govt is intended to wipe out the massive debt the last Mayor of that city ran up? )
July 28, 2026
@Mark B – the numpties involved in that campaign if they are not on benefits haven’t yet realised they ‘are the rich’
July 28, 2026
I assume that departments exist in order to ensure focus is given to a given area (women and equalities, net zero?)
Therefore to abolish a science department seems quite concerning, moving responsibility elsewhere runs the risk of loss of focus. AI and IT should have a junior minister inside a science department not a whole department in itself.
I am all in favour of cost cutting, but this move does not suggest savings to me, it suggests more expense.
July 28, 2026
Did they put them up or is it perhaps some lefty charity funding them?
July 28, 2026
Or perhaps that Gary Linaker group of virtue signalling millionaires who want even more taxation might be involved? Can they not think of anything better to spend their money on than more tax for the government to waste?
July 28, 2026
If Parliament can legislate for Sir Keir Starmer, when director of the CPS, to have a special pensions deal for him alone, then they can surely legislate for the Gary Linekar group to also have a special taxation deal for them alone.
July 28, 2026
+1 or if they were all serious and honest they could all just write a cheque to HMRC! Doubtless a huge one with a photo op.
July 28, 2026
Pity some of them took dodgy action to reduce their tax bills. It makes their stand look so cheap!
July 28, 2026
Jacob Rees-Mogg yesterday seemed to be very hard on Lucy Connolly who made her silly tweet in the heat of the moment after the appalling stabbing of little children in Southport then rapidly deleted it. A first offence, did not incite (as she said for all I care), she pleaded guilty early, and had lost a child herself recently. No way Jacob did this poor women deserve any prison time at all let alone a sentence of 31 months. Where is your Catholic forgiveness Jacob.
Yet our brilliant court of appeal judges said it was perfectly reasonable (or words to that effect). Two tier DEI is the order of the day it seems with UK judges. They also refused twice to give Lucy Letby an appeal for her blatantly unsafe 15 convictions – not even for any one of them. Where do these odd inhumane judges come from?
July 28, 2026
The Department of Media and Sport would not be missed.
July 28, 2026
Department of Media and Sport and OFCOM – The ministry of (the official propaganda) Truth and the suppression of the real truth whenever it is inconvenient. I heard recently that they even try insist on media saying “Our NHS” and are appalling on the climate alarmist hoax.
July 28, 2026
Its not exactly getting rid of a department, when all those involved stay as direct State employees funded by the beleaguered Taxpayer.
The well worn phrase of ‘shuffling the deck chairs’ come to mind.
July 28, 2026
We need to abolish departments that are ‘made-up woke’ and don’t achieve growth
# Minister for Energy seurcity & Net-zero
# Minister for Women and Equalities (including DEI)
# Minister for Equalities
# Minister of State for Women and Equalities (including office of equal opportunity)
# Minister for Faith
# No 10 North will take over responsibilities for local economic growth and devolution strategy
# All quango
https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations
July 28, 2026
Minister of State (Minister for Artificial Intelligence)
July 28, 2026
The State the establishment is stuffed full PPE redundant graduates, they don’t do STEM, the don’t know what STEM is for. Even if the did understand that STEM provides a future they would fight it, the last thing the Establishment want is those that can deduce, find answers, use commonsense and logic for the benefit of all. The Establishment the holders of PPE only do personal tyrannical ideology to further self, self-esteem and ego
July 28, 2026
Most MPs do not seem to have any science or even just maths after 16. Even about 60% of recent science ministers had no science degrees.
July 28, 2026
And the Chief Scientific Adviser to The Treasury has a degree in foreign languages and literature!
Reply The Chief Scientific Adviser to the government, my All Souls colleague Angela Maclean has a degree in maths and a doctorate in biology from Oxford.
July 28, 2026
Lord John,
Sorry, but I don’t think maths and biology are the most appropriate degrees to rein in Parliament’s current Net Zero insanity (see your post yesterday). The country’s Chief Scientific Adviser needs to be an engineer or a physicist. It is 26 years since the Chief Scientific Adviser was a physicist. This could explain a lot of misdirection.
July 28, 2026
Perhaps she can persuade the Government to do the decent thing & stop hiding the data on the Covid Vaccines health positives and negatives. But given what the date will show perhaps not! Then she could try to explain to them that their energy policy is obviously insane, even if you do accept the CO2 devil gas religion.
July 28, 2026
As always it is just a joke. There will be no cost saving and the Civil Servants will just move to other departments.
Under this Labour government the UK is heading for bankruptcy and will go bankrupt.
The Civil Service needs to be cut to no more than 150,000. What can’t be done with that number, does not get done. That saves £17 billion a year, apart from about a quarter of that in redundancy payments in year one.
Every Quango should face a 50% cut in its budget now and another 50% in the new tax year. The first budget reduction would save around £175 billion, with another half of that to come in the new tax year. Any Qungo that can’t survive on 25% of its current budget should then be shut down. Has the Health Quango that was supposed to be shut down actually been shut down yet? I doubt it!
July 28, 2026
If Net Zero is cancelled, 6700 zealots could be given their P45s. The Foreign Office is chok full of anti-British and anti- Israeli subversives, some of whom attended an Iranian Embassy celebration during the war intended to stop them completing a nuclear bomb. Then there are all the Green zealots in the Agriculture department who are busy paying farmers to rewild land. And at the HMRC there are the digital geeks who spend their time making tax difficult with 5 returns pa now required. And at the MoD there are large numbers of DEI HR pests sending Critical Race theory pamphlets to staff trying to buy weapons, to say nothing about admirals without ships and generals without troops.
July 28, 2026
I see the “Network Rail and SWT” spokesperson is now the same person (now that SWT had been nationalised and is effectively the same organisation as Network Rail).
And their great insight into why they are cancelling trains, due to dry weather, soil shrinkage, making the lines unstable in places, is…. Can you guess… “Climate Change”.
Not the piss poor design, maintenance, and approach to managing the tracks then, no not that, its climate change.
This is nationalised railways.
Hope everyone enjoys it.
July 28, 2026
IG,
You forgot ‘Events’. This may be on a completely different line but you get cancellations because of it (Ascot, Rugby). Also ‘extreme weather events’ or Summertime.
The system is joined up in this area at least.
However, nobody is sacked for poor performance and the railways were already trashed by privatisation and loss of experienced, long term employees.
July 29, 2026
I hear Kemi is going to rubber stamp burnhams massive increase in inheritance tax, to supposedly create funds for old age care. If she does it then the Conservatives will remain unelectable. That and the Conservatives refusal to apologise for the massive immigration they engineered are their biggest barriers to winning an election.
This stuff being dealt behind closed doors, in nobody’s manifesto, is terrible.
We are now worse than a banana republic.
Reply Do not lie. Kemi rules out more tax rises.
July 29, 2026
I only report what the press say.
Kemi has been called to a meeting with Burnham where the hope is they can do a deal on a national old age care service, along the lines of the NHS but for looking after old folk.
I am inclined to think a deal will be done across labour and conservatives, and it will be done without having been in a manifesto.
Reply Unlikely to be a deal as Kemi has ruled out tax rises and or mire borrowing. Don’t make things up.