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DIUS, the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, was set up on 28 June 2007 with responsibilities to improve science, research and innovation and to foster economic development. On the evidence of its first Departmental Report we consider that it has not yet found its feet and it is too early to say whether DIUS will achieve the ambitious objectives set for it by the Prime Minister.
The Departmental Report itself was less than satisfactory. It relies too much on jargon and promoting a positive tone, we suspect in part, because the results of DIUS's work may take years, if not decades, to realise. For a department that takes pride, with some justification, in taking account of the views of its "customers" we were surprised that the Departmental Report was not more informative or helpful to the reader. A more concise report written in plain English with clearly presented and independently verified statistics would aid the scrutiny of DIUS in future years.
With "innovation" in its title we had high hopes of DIUS demonstrating innovatory methods of operation. We were disappointed in the examples of innovation in its own operations DIUS cited: use of new social media, "hot-desking" and remote working, which for many are far from new. We also examined how DIUS balances its responsibilities for promoting, and providing resources for, innovation outside the department with its duty to ensure that taxpayers' money is not put at risk or wasted. This is a crucial issue as innovative companies face a shortage of capital during the economic downturn and government steps in to bridge the shortfall. We call for a clear statement from DIUS explaining how it is going to manage innovation and financial risk.
We had frustrations in scrutinising DIUS's financial management. The setting up of DIUS as a new department has made it difficult to see trends in the administrative costs of running the department as DIUS's costs cannot be easily compared with its predecessor departments. Nor are we yet clear how £1.5 billion in efficiency savings that DIUS has promised to make by 2010-11 are going to be generated. On the spending programmes that DIUS manages, we noted what may be an emerging pattern of underused resources from further education and skills programmes going to meet spending pressures from higher education. We call for better information on the resources going to, and taken from, the Government's flagship skills programme Train to Gain.
We also reviewed the work of the new Government Chief Scientific Adviser, Professor Beddington, who took up his post in January 2008. We noted a change in his approach compared with his predecessor. Some of the changes he is making—for example, the speeding up of departmental science reviews—we welcome. We can also see advantages in his "collegiate" approach and desire to work within the Whitehall machine. It is too early to see the fruits of this approach but we have some concerns—based on Professor Beddington's responses on our questions about homeopathy and the reclassification of cannabis—that the price of this new approach may be too high. There is a risk that the customary, strong public voice from the Government Chief Scientific Adviser advocating policy based on evidence-based science will become muted.
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