{"id":700505,"date":"2026-07-19T20:58:07","date_gmt":"2026-07-19T20:58:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/700505\/"},"modified":"2026-07-19T20:58:07","modified_gmt":"2026-07-19T20:58:07","slug":"anger-as-luddite-andy-burnham-prepares-to-gut-ai-department","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/700505\/","title":{"rendered":"Anger as \u2018Luddite\u2019 Andy Burnham prepares to gut AI department"},"content":{"rendered":"

Andy Burnham\u2019s plan to gut the government department leading Britain\u2019s AI strategy has prompted a fierce backlash from the tech industry.<\/p>\n

Senior industry leaders warned that plans to abolish the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and spread its functions between other departments would undermine the country\u2019s AI strategy at a key moment.<\/p>\n

In a letter to Mr Burnham, lobby groups Tech UK and Startup Coalition urged the incoming prime minister<\/a> to rethink his plans, warning that breaking up the tech department would send a \u201cterrible signal\u201d and undermine the AI sector.<\/p>\n

The UK Tech Cluster Group, another lobbying organisation, said breaking up DSIT would \u201ccreate disruption at exactly the wrong moment\u201d.<\/p>\n

Tom Skinner, a former special adviser in DSIT under the previous government, said: \u201cDSIT looks after the frontiers of all the technologies where the UK needs to excel.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnderstandably, the politicians\u2019 focus will be on issues like nationalising the steel industry, or water companies<\/a>, or post offices.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut if the Government wants any growth at all, they\u2019re going to need a growth miracle and the way to achieve that is by doubling down on all the things that DSIT looks after.\u201d<\/p>\n

Writing in The Telegraph<\/a>, Julia Lopez, the shadow technology secretary, said the department was being \u201cbroken up in the knacker\u2019s yard\u201d.<\/p>\n

Robert Jenrick, Reform\u2019s Treasury spokesman, called Mr Burnham \u201ca Luddite who cares more about hammering business and taking the country back to the 1970s with state control\u201d.<\/p>\n

In his first speech as Labour leader last Friday, Mr Burnham complained about the \u201cdeindustrialisation of the 1980s\u201d but made no mention of AI or technology more broadly.<\/p>\n

According to reports, Mr Burnham is considering redistributing DSIT\u2019s functions across a beefed-up Department for Business and Trade and a bolstered Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).<\/p>\n

Mr Burnham is expected to reward his allies with the briefs. Jonathan Reynolds, the current chief whip, has been lined up to lead the business department while Lucy Powell, who represented the incoming prime minister on media rounds on Sunday, is expected to take on the culture brief.<\/p>\n

The senior Labour source said she had pitched for a \u201cbig department to run\u201d, which could explain Mr Burnham\u2019s potential expansion of DCMS to include some aspects of AI and science policy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Andy Burnham\u2019s plan to gut the government department leading Britain\u2019s AI strategy has prompted a fierce backlash from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":700506,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,19306,733,4308,84,1294,2053,160075,5438,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-700505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-andy-burnham","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-labour-party","tag-live-priority","tag-standard","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=700505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/700506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=700505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=700505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=700505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}