Theresa May faces further criticism of her domestic policy in the face of Brexit pressures after it emerged that almost half of the staff in the newly created Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy admitted they did not know what the Whitehall office stands for.
The prime minister surprised many in Westminster when she combined business, energy and climate change to form BEIS. The move, one of several changes to the makeup of Whitehall, was aimed at bolstering the traditionally weak business department, and checking the dominance of the Treasury.
But as the business secretary, Greg Clark, prepares to launch the government’s industrial strategy later this month, it has emerged that almost half of his staff say they have no clear idea what BEIS stands for.
In a recent survey, carried out in the autumn, many of the staff based at two headquarters buildings in London showed little enthusiasm for the reorganisation.
About half (48%) of said they did not “have a clear understanding of BEIS’s purpose”; while 19% agreed that the organisational changes have been for the better.
The shadow business secretary, Clive Lewis, said: “This is not only a resounding thumbs down for the business secretary from his own staff but also an indictment on the prime minister’s flagship reorganisation of government, which seems to have left her civil servants as concerned as the rest of us.
“She sent a dangerous signal by abolishing the Department for [Energy and] Climate Change and six months on there is no sign of the industrial strategy that was in the new department’s name, business is still waiting for answers on Brexit and the only jobs that they have created were changing the signs over their door on Whitehall.”
BEIS’s headquarters is close to Victoria station but the department is also still occupying DECC’s former base off Whitehall, nearby. Insiders said being split between two sites had not helped the departments to pull together and that plans to bring all the staff into one building had taken longer than expected.
Civil servants in several different departments are feeling the strain of a rapid reorganisation of Whitehall to equip the government for the task of managing Brexit negotiations, which are expected to begin formally by the end of March.
BEIS’s role has also been complicated by the fact that some of its former trade responsibilities have been hived off to the new Department for International Trade led by Liam Fox, while the responsibility of liaising with businesses about Brexit has gone to the David Davis-led Department for Exiting the European Union.
The department formerly known as the Department of Trade and Industry has been repeatedly renamed over the years, as successive governments sought to stress different aspects of its role – including an ill-fated, and brief rebrand in 2005, as the Department for Productivity, Energy and Industry, quickly dubbed “dippy”, and even “penis”.
May’s inclusion of “industrial strategy” as part of the new department’s title signalled a more interventionist government approach; and an abrupt change of style from that of Clark’s predecessor Sajid Javid, who had said the two words did not belong together.
Clark is expected to publish later this month a green paper that sets out the sectors and regions the government is keen to support, and how it hopes to increase growth and productivity outside the capital.
Environmental groups reacted with alarm to the announcement that DECC was to be abolished, arguing that climate change would inevitably be downgraded as a priority, and suggested the low morale reflected the new department’s lack of clear purpose.
Craig Bennett, chief executive of Friends of the Earth, said: “Until recently, civil servants in the former Department for Energy and Climate Change had a clear, vital remit: to face up to the most important issue facing humanity.
“Now, they are scrabbling around trying to patch up the damage that leaving the EU is likely to cause to our economy with little time for anything else. They have gone from being rightly recognised as international leaders in addressing the challenge of climate change, to a department that is now running to a standstill.”
A spokesperson for BEIS said: “This year’s People Survey took place less than three months after the new Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy was created by the new government from two existing departments, resulting in a significant transition for staff.
“The new department is at the forefront of much of the new government’s ambitious agenda.”
