Sunak’s business shake-up highlights an important issue he still has to solve

Twice, in recent days. Either it’s a sign of advancing age or genuine nostalgia or both, but on two occasions this week, I’ve found myself referring to the Department of Trade and Industry. The first was describing the location of a building in Westminster and I said it was across the road from the old DTI offices.

The second was bemoaning the fact that company directors are not policed like they were, and that they used to send in the “DTI inspectors” to bring companies to heel. Indeed, even the very thought that the beaks might be appointed, usually a senior lawyer and an accountant, was often enough to stop corporate misbehaving – such was their clout.

What this episode told me was that the DTI was imprinted on my consciousness. I knew what the letters stood for, understood what the government department did, which area of society it served. Alas, I cannot say the same for BEIS, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

Not that it matters, since BEIS is no more. In Rishi Sunak’s Whitehall shake-up, it becomes the new departments for Business and Trade; Energy Security and Net Zero; and Science, Innovation and Technology. Blimey, why have one when three will do?

Back to the DTI. It lasted from 1970 until 2007. Prior to its creation there was the Board of Trade (still is, now advisory) and the Ministry for Technology. They joined to form the DTI.

Then, Gordon Brown, in one of his first acts as prime minister, renamed it Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform or BERR. That’s not strictly true, because there was a move by Tony Blair in 2005 to rebrand the DTI the Department for Productivity, Energy and Industry. The DPEI was hastily abandoned after it was pointed out the initials could be misused to form “DIPPY” or other ruder forms.

As it was, BERR survived less than two years, disbanded in 2009 in favour of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills or BIS, which was a combination of BERR and the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills or DIUS. BIS was scrapped in 2016 to make way for BEIS. Now that’s gone and we have three new departments to get to know.

What does this exhausting roll call of initials and acronyms tell us? I’d like to report that on each occasion one lot of letters gave way to another for good reason and that the replacement was an improvement on the former. If only that was true.

Sadly, there has been no discernible positive gain for business down the decades, regardless of which party has been in office. What this list illustrates is that successive governments do not know what to do with industry and enterprise, that all they can think of doing is to rearrange the letters like deck chairs.

You knew where you were with the DTI. Since then, the part of government that is supposed to be concerned with the vital function of wealth creation has been a dog’s dinner.

Part of the problem is that in the pecking order of Whitehall, whatever the department is called, it’s not one of the big beasts. It’s not a large spender and does not throw up issues that capture headlines and dominate focus groups and polling.

In that sense, it’s always vulnerable to change and being closed down. Prime ministers, anxious to be seen as though they are reforming Whitehall and appearing modern, seize upon it as a soft target. It’s part of their desire to always be seen wearing a high-vis jacket and hard hat.

Another is that the Commons is devoid of MPs with serious commercial experience and knowledge, even on the Conservative benches, so this key area of government is passed around. It’s seen as a stepping-stone to something bigger and more important, not an end in itself.

The losers in this merry-go-round are the taxpayer (usually a renaming entails a new typeface, new departmental colour and new premises and new senior staff – all of which costs a packet) and trade and industry. The repositioning inevitably involves the creation of a new departmental framework and organisational structure, and the outlining of a new strategy and objectives – all of which take manpower and time.

It’s actually very simple. Those in enterprise, commerce, trade, industry – call it what you will, after all the government does – want to feel they enjoy the support of officialdom, that the government of the day is guarding their back, doing everything it can to give them the tools they need and to open any doors that will help them and UK PLC prosper.

Unfortunately, we’ve allowed this function of government to become mired in complexity and jargon, with prime ministers bolting on anything that makes them look up with the times. So Sunak has devised three departments where one used to suffice. Which of the trio will take under its wing a tech innovator that promises to transform the consumption of energy and is hopeful of winning overseas orders? By my reading of the new departmental descriptions that qualifies for all three. That can’t be right and it’s a recipe for disaster – what that means in practice is the company relocating to a country where the government understands it and will give it all the attention, financial incentives, assistance and encouragement it requires to develop and grow.

I want to suppose that Sunak’s three-out-of-one creation will work, I really do. I’m just not holding my breath.