Science, Innovation and Technology Committee

15 September 2026

Contents updated on 15 Sept 2026

The Committee opens the inquiry and questions think‑tank witnesses on the abolition of DSIT, associated disruption and costs, the dispersion of science and digital responsibilities, and the resulting fragmentation of AI and digital governance across departments, before closing the first evidence session.

Committee Tue, 15 Sept 2026 House of Commons

00:13 - 01:31

Speaker 1

Order, order. And welcome to today's meeting of the freshly renamed Science and Technology Committee. And this is our first session of this parliamentary term, and we are discussing the machinery of government changes announced before the summer recess, effectively the abolition of DSIT and its implications for the future of science, innovation, and technology policy and decisions. And we're delighted to start by welcoming two witnesses with extensive experience of previous government reorganizations: Dr. Simon Kaye, who's Director of Policy and Research at Re:State, and Alex Thomas, who's Executive Director at the Institute for Government. And later this morning, we'll hear from the scientific research community and the startup and scale-up community.

But I'm going to start by asking each of you a very simple question. Um, and particularly Alex Thomas, the Institute for Government was rumored to have been advocating for the abolition of DSIT for some time. Perhaps you can suggest whether that was true or not, but can't while saying whether DSIT has been effective since its creation in 2023. And then I'll come to Dr. Simon Kaye.

01:31 - 02:56

Speaker 2

Thank you, Chair, and thank you very much to the committee for having us. That's a curveball. I wasn't expecting you to suggest that the Institute for Government had been advocating for the abolition of DSIT because we haven't. So no, and in fact, actually, the and particularly the commentary we've and analysis we've carried out since the abolition of the department, we've said that it was a mistake to get rid of it. But we may come onto that more in a moment.

I mean, I do think where I suppose when the then Prime Minister Rishi Sunak created the department, we are generally sort of you need to make a very good case for any machinery of government change. We've done a lot of research, and again, we may come onto this, into how costly, disruptive, not only in the absolute cost but the opportunity costs of machinery of government changes they are. So we would generally approach any sort of stroke of the Prime Ministerial pen with a machinery of government change with a bit of skepticism. I was also personally concerned when DSIT was created that it was a um it had the slight feel of a here today, gone tomorrow department. Did it have a kind of strong enough locus and sufficiently kind of hefty policy responsibilities to really establish itself in the Whitehall landscape?

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