Concern for Telecoms as New UK Prime Minister Scraps Tech Department UPDATE
The incoming UK Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, is reportedly planning to abolish the Government’s central Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), which also oversees broadband and mobile connectivity (telecoms) – partly via the Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency. The proposal plan could see DSIT’s functions being spread across other departments.
The potential move (see The Guardian and The Telegraph) comes at a time when broadband and mobile roll-outs, as well as the use of AI and data centres, are of increasingly central importance to the country’s future development. This is to say nothing of the issues around the underfunding of UK science, which is another significant issue.
The industry body techUK, which represents many of the UK’s key technology companies, is already understood to have written to Burnham in the hope of encouraging him to re-think his plans and thus avoid sending a “terrible signal” to the wider sector.
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At the time of writing, we’re still awaiting official details and there’s a large amount of uncertainty about what will actually happen. But the indications are that DSIT’s current functions could be returned to where they came from under the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and the Department for Business and Trade.
In practical terms this might not, in the longer run, change as much as some people think. But such a reorganisation would at the very least cause some short-term delays, confusion and send a perhaps unwelcome signal to the sector that it’s not going to be as highly valued as before – an unusual position given the importance of science, technology and telecoms in today’s world. Either way, we should find out more today and will update accordingly.
UPDATE 21st July 2026 @ 6:50am
The Government has confirmed that DSIT is being merged with the Business Department to create the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade (DBIST). The new Secretary of State for DBIST has also been named as Jonathan Reynolds, while Kanishka Narayan has been appointed as the Minister for Artificial Intelligence.
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At present we are still waiting to see who will be appointed as the Minister of State for all things broadband and telecoms related, although we note that Lisa Nandy has separately been appointed as Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Doesn’t matter, Saint Nigel of Clacton will be PM by the end of the year and the sunlit uplands will finally be delivered! Rejoice!
First of all, he has to win back Clacton. If he does he will have to go through the Parliamentary Standards Committee. Irrespective of that Reform will need to be investigated by the Met Police for potential illegal donations from several non-resident individuals/companies.
Bit uncouth to be heavily drinking at lunchtime on a Monday
As much as i want labour gone they just proved they can crown a new king without any opposition whatsoever. Watch him further balloon taxes. Council tax massive hikes are already announced
They proved they can do things not in their manifesto or even against their manifesto with no backlash.
Remember the borrowing costs during Liz Truss budget? Now it is much worse and not a peep
They hold a huge majority in parliament full of compliant yes voters (unlike in Tmay/Bojo times) and they legally have until end of 2029. It will get much worse
Scraping or renaming a government department is a clear signal that budgets are to be cut in that particular area rather than by simply extending the scope of a funding commitment.
However did we manage before such new departments were fabricated.. Almost seemed like a job creation scheem for spending tax payers money, along with BDUK. Just think if there was a national telecoms utillity rather than 1000+ altnets, ceos etc. and shareholders etc. we could simply have a national network rather than little companies going bust just to end un in the hands of a few large corporations who’ll just lobby/coerce government and its outsourced regulator to do their bidding rather than provide a consistent UK network.. OOee.
@SicOf
The answer is that we did not manage at all.
Each department has an allocated budget with which it chooses what initiatives to fund. With a single Whitehall department responsible for technology and digital infrastructure, we would know exactly how much is being spent in those areas.
Now that the technology and digital remits are split across two departments and the Cabinet Office with no dedicated funding, technology and digital initiatives have to compete with a whole range of projects in entirely different sectors in order to win funding. It will also be less clear just how much money is being spent on technology and digital.
@SicOf
In the real world, we do not have a single national telecom, and we would STILL not have full coverage.
In fact, there would be less chance of the network continuing to expand under nationalisation because the government would not be able to borrow the money to fund such an expansion.
Delusional concepts of how the real world works are leading this country to a rather unpleasant wake-up call.
Is this is the same department overseeing the online safety act and the schools bill under the thin veil of child safety? If so, good riddance. It’s all about data mining and censorship, not safety.
🙂
Yes.
The bad news is that Burnham intends to press ahead with the ban. Following the dissolution of DSIT, the policy will be led by Nandy in the D{D}CMS. She has a firm anti-tech stance on many matters.