If BIS is to be scrapped, there must be better arguments than cost alone
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Version 0 of 1. Civil servants at the Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) department went to work on Monday with some trepidation. The Independent revealed that morning that the Labour MP Adrian Bailey would investigate whether the new Conservative Government has secret plans to axe BIS, should he be re-elected by his colleagues as chairman of the Business Select Committee later this month. On paper, scrapping BIS makes sense at a time when the Government is seeking £30bn of Whitehall cuts. There are arguably far too many departments already – most certainly too many ministerial positions – and rolling BIS into another ministry would save on duplications, both functional, such as IT, and practical. Infrastructure, business and financial regulation, and green fuel projects, for example, span BIS, the Treasury and the Department of Energy and Climate Change. As my colleague Ben Chu has reported, most business lobby groups are nervous at the prospect of losing a dedicated department, arguing that it is a champion of business interests in Whitehall. Notably, the Institute of Directors’ director-general, Simon Walker, argued that breaking up BIS was “a little crude”. Mr Bailey cannot be certain that the Tories want to get rid of BIS eventually – David Cameron has, after all, just appointed rising star Sajid Javid as Business Secretary. However, Vince Cable, who was the longest serving Business Secretary or its equivalent since the 1950s before shockingly losing his Twickenham seat last week, was not surprised when I mentioned it to him. The ballroom dancing Liberal Democrat grandee even suggested the idea himself in 2003, when it was the Department for Trade and Industry. What is different now, Mr Cable says, is that most departmental spending is predominantly in skills and apprenticeships. “BIS has also created an industrial strategy, creating a business-government relationship. Somebody has to do that,” he argues. Mr Cable adds that “moving the centre of gravity to the Treasury”, where most of these areas would probably end up, is “too short-termist” for such policy areas. BIS’s industrial strategy would be lost in a department that is focused on that year’s government accounts. Mr Bailey must move quickly to find out if scrapping BIS really is an option. If it is, ministers must be pressed to make an awfully strong case for its demise. The former Lib Dem party leader Nick Clegg Clegg can be an asset in rebuilding the Lib Dems The Lib Dems haven’t had an awful lot to boast about over the past week, so it’s unsurprising that they are flaunting how thousands of people have signed up to the party since election night. There must be a degree of “guilt membership” here: those who left their beloved party, angered over working with the Conservatives, and others who finally realised that they actually did think the Lib Dems were a curb on Tory excesses. The latter group might even have voted to see Mr Cameron back at Number 10, so frightened were they by the politically effective but incorrect argument that Ed Miliband would work in unison with the SNP to seize Downing Street. They are now down to eight seats, barely more than in the dark days of the 1970 election when Jeremy Thorpe’s band polled 2.1 million votes but secured only six seats. The Lib Dem rebuild is going to take years, but they are lucky to have two of Parliament’s most outstanding campaigners among the eight, in Norman Lamb and Tim Farron. In the forthcoming leadership contest, Farron represents a cleaner break with the past Coalition, as he was not a minister and voted against tuition fees, although Lamb’s work on mental health when in government was one of the party’s recognised successes. Either way, they would do well to convince Nick Clegg, who just about survived the Labour onslaught in Sheffield Hallam, to take on a merged economy and business brief, although with responsibility for universities stripped out. Mr Clegg might be “toxic”, as his backbenchers used to say, in certain areas (notably education because of the tuition fees debacle) but giving him the economy role would be a reminder, every time he spoke on the subject, that the Lib Dems were integral to the recovery. Rather than wandering the corridors of the Houses of Parliament like Banquo’s ghost, every time he mentioned apprenticeships as part of the business brief it would remind voters that Mr Cable was axed despite creating more than two million apprenticeships on his watch. If the Lib Dems wants even more new members and a surge in guilt votes – and there’s no shame in getting those – they should rely on Mr Clegg’s rehabilitation. Boris Johnson is now attending political Cabinet meetings Boris could be called the minister for no third runway It might not be a job as such, but Boris Johnson is now attending political Cabinet meetings, which puts him close to the Conservative leadership. Given his staunch opposition to expansion at Heathrow, this makes a third runway at the airport incredibly unlikely. Yet Sir Howard Davies’ Airports Commission is only weeks away from issuing its final report that will recommend expanding Heathrow or building a second runway at Gatwick. No pressure, then, Sir Howard: pick any location as long as it’s in West Sussex. Twitter.com/@mleftly |