New Department for Business, Innovation & Skills

Following the recent cabinet re-shuffle, the government has created a new Department for Business, Innovation & Skills whose key role will be to build Britain's capabilities to compete in the global economy.

The department will be created by merging BERR (Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform) and DIUS (Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills). The merger will create a single department, headed by First Secretary of State Lord Mandelson, "committed to building Britain's future economic strengths. To compete in a global economy and create the jobs of the future Britain requires a regulatory environment that encourages enterprise, skilled people, innovation, and world-class science and research. The merger of BERR and DIUS brings together the parts of the government with key expertise in these areas.


It combines BERR's strengths in shaping the enterprise environment, analysing the strengths and needs of the various parts of British industry, building strategies for industrial strength and expertise in better regulation with DIUS's expertise in maintaining world class universities, expanding access to higher education, investing in the UK's science base and shaping skills policy and innovation through bodies such as the Technology Strategy Board".

In a statement, Downing Street said the move would put further education and universities "closer to the heart of government thinking about building now for the upturn".

Downing Street said the department would "invest in the development of a higher education system committed to widening participation, equipping people with the skills and knowledge to compete in a global economy and securing and enhancing Britain's existing world-class research base" and "continue to invest in the UK's world-class science base and develop strategies for commercialising more of that science".

The new department is the institutional realisation of the approach to promoting UK competitiveness and productivity as set out in the New Industries, New Jobs paper of April 2009, produced jointly by BERR and DIUS.

For more information go to the BIS web page at: www.dius.gov.uk.

See also: www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=406877...

 

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Wed, 24/06/2009 - 09:16 — Admin