House of Lords
Department for Science, Innovation and Technology: Abolition
(1 day, 21 hours ago)
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Lord Empey
To ask His Majesty’s Government what impact the abolition of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology will have on overall civil service headcount.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, and Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Twycross) (Lab)
Before answering the noble Lord’s Question, I refer Members to my ministerial declaration of interests. My husband works for the Government Digital Service.
The redistribution of the function of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology is independent of decisions on overall Civil Service headcount, as is the case with all machinery of government changes. Artificial intelligence, science and technology are major priorities that cut across the whole of government and are vital for the country’s future economic prosperity. DSIT’s functions have been accordingly redistributed so that policy relating to science and technology is better aligned across government.
Lord Empey (UUP)
My Lords, approximately in excess of 4,000 civil servants were employed in that department. I wonder whether this has led to the abolition of any posts, or are people simply being redistributed? Can the Minister perhaps tell us what impact there will be in the Civil Service on total numbers, which rose dramatically after Covid? Can the Minister tell us whether the number in the Civil Service is reducing? If she does not have figures, perhaps she could write to me and place a letter in the Library.
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
As is the case with all machinery of government changes, the redistribution of the functions of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology is independent of decisions on overall Civil Service headcount. These changes are about ensuring that we have the right structures in place to drive the Government’s priorities, in light of the significant difference in terms of how important digital is to the world. It is not about reducing headcount.
However, we have committed to future central government becoming smaller and more strategic. The Cabinet Secretary is leading a review into the organisation, performance and transformation of the permanent Civil Service, which will include, among other things, the size, shape and structure of the service. This review will report before summer 2027.
Lord Birt (CB)
I am sure that the Minister is aware that the closing down of DSIT has caused bemusement in the science and technology community. We have departments that focus rightly on health, education, culture, defence and other areas. At a time when both the challenge and opportunity in this sector are so enormous, why is there no focus on science and technology?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
We absolutely have a focus on science and technology, which is why the Minister for AI has a seat at the Cabinet table. I agree with the noble Lord that the UK stands at a critical juncture, where unprecedented global changes mean that we need to secure our position in relation to these areas, but we cannot see science and technology as an isolated issue that is limited to one department; it is a fundamental priority that cuts across the whole of government and is crucial to the UK’s future economic prosperity.
Lord Ranger of Northwood (Con)
My Lords, the Government were doing reasonably well through DSIT in helping a booming industry in UK AI find its way through the plethora of initiatives and policies, including the AI growth zones, the AI opportunity action plan and sovereign AI. As well as for civil servants, the removal of DSIT has caused confusion in industry, and I declare my interest as a co-founder of the Business AI Alliance and an adviser to a number of AI businesses. All these businesses have said the same thing to me: where do they go now? Where are all these policy areas sitting? How can they navigate their way as they try to bring that key element of growth to the UK economy?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
As I said in my initial response to the noble Lord, Lord Empey, we have a Minister for AI at the Cabinet table. We also have a new and renewed BIST, which has been created to signify the UK’s global leadership in innovation and maximise the growth potential that can be contributed to the UK economy by emerging strategic sectors. This is part of our reindustrialisation agenda. BIST is now responsible for emerging and frontier technologies, and I am confident that this will be part of its key work going forward.
Lord Pack (LD)
My Lords, we have in recent weeks had yet more evidence of AI agents going rogue, including hacking websites and even sending a fake tip about a real crime to the US police. Can I ask not about overall headcount, but specifically what the impact of these changes will be on the headcount for AI regulation? Is that headcount going to go up, go down, or stay the same?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
The percentage of staff in digital and data roles is projected to increase. We are clear that when we are looking at overall responsibilities, functions and roles within the Civil Service, we need to make sure that we are ready for future opportunities, but also future threats, as the noble Lord made clear. I had the pleasure of going to talk to AISI last week and I was impressed by the calibre of civil servants there and the work they are doing to protect us and to build a rigorous scientific understanding of both the capabilities and the risks associated with AI.
Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)
My Lords, there is a problem. The Minister’s remarks seem perfectly reasonable, although rather difficult to understand, but can she indicate to the House precisely how many people, and what categories of people, will be working with the Minister, who now has a Cabinet position?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
I am unclear about how I am going to come up with an exact figure for somebody who covers a cross-government function, albeit that he will have teams such as AISI working specifically with him. I cannot stress enough that this Government see AI as so crucial that we have a Cabinet-level Minister who has responsibility for drawing all these threads together and for making sure that we are well equipped for both the opportunities that are presented and the well-documented risks associated with AI.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, a large number of civil servants, paid as civil servants, are in fact working for trade unions. Have the Government considered prioritising replacing them with AI?
Lord Spellar (Lab)
My Lords, we are concentrating a lot on the impact of AI on outside industry. To what extent is the Civil Service looking at using AI in its own internal operations? In particular, what impact will it have on the increased headcount that we have post Covid?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
We have a huge amount of work going on across government to make sure that we use AI to its potential, from the Department of Health and Social Care looking at how it will use it in a cutting-edge AI trial to transform cancer care—albeit that that is within the health service. We are confident that AI will improve public services and boost productivity, from identifying fraud and potential fraud to making sure that we have automated policy analysts and AI tutoring tools. We are rolling out AI tools that will save time and money to get the most effective Civil Service for the public.
Lord Scriven (LD)
My Lords, headcount is irrelevant. The real issue is the outcomes and outputs that the department delivers. In closing the department down, what will now be able to be done more efficiently, for those in industry and for the country?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
I am going to repeat myself, with apologies to your Lordships’ House. Not just the UK but the whole world is at such a critical juncture in relation to the rapid increase and developments in AI science and technology. I understand on one level why people think “Well, we’ll put it all in one department and one box”, but putting it across government and making sure somebody is driving that progress across government is critical to making sure that this is embedded and part of everybody’s work across every department, rather than it sitting in DSIT.
Baroness Finn (Con)
My Lords, between 2010 and 2016, under the coalition and Conservative Governments, the Civil Service headcount fell by 21%. We simultaneously set up the award-winning Government Digital Service in 2011. Despite this Government’s repeated pledges to reduce headcount, the numbers have risen by 2% since they took office in 2024. Can the Minister say whether Ministers at any point approved that increase?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
The noble Baroness would have to ask the previous Conservative Government, which saw an increase from 2016 of 140,000 civil servants. We can have a discussion about numbers, but while that might be true of the coalition Government, it definitely was not true of the Conservative Government that followed.
Havant Thicket Reservoir: Pollutants
(1 day, 21 hours ago)
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Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb
To ask His Majesty’s Government what independent safeguards they intend to put in place at the Havant Thicket Reservoir to ensure contaminants such as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, nano plastics and other emerging pollutants do not present an unacceptable risk.
Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, before the noble Baroness asks her Question, I remind the House that the first supplementary question should take no more than 45 seconds, remaining questions should each take no more than 30 seconds and responses should be of similar length.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and deeply resent that. I am one of the shortest speakers in the House.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Baroness Hayman of Ullock) (Lab)
My Lords, I do not think that the Chief Whip’s comments were personally meant.
Reservoir operations must comply with water framework directive objectives. Water companies are required to follow the drinking water safety planning approach and must assess risks to drinking water from the water source that it is taken from until it reaches consumers at the taps. The planned raw water sources to supply the Havant Thicket reservoir have been monitored and mitigations have been proposed where required, including for emerging substances.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
I thank the Minister for her Answer, but I am deeply unsatisfied with it, because I assume that it is Southern Water itself that has monitored and checked the sewage effluent that is going to be put into Havant Thicket reservoir. We need a reservoir. We desperately need more water sources, but we cannot trust Southern Water to audit its own discharges. Can the Government do what is being done in countries such as Singapore and create an expert panel to audit exactly what is going into that water supply? The forever chemicals that I have referred to are highly poisonous and pernicious.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
The noble Baroness mentioned Singapore. It is important to say that water recycling is used widely around the world, not just in Singapore but in Australia, the USA and in Belgium. Southern Water is one of the companies that are developing water recycling plants for the future. It is also important to say that the project is going to use highly treated recycled water that has been through a series of very strict treatment and quality checks before it would enter the Havant Thicket reservoir. Water stored in the reservoir would then go through further treatment and testing before being supplied as drinking water. I am happy for the noble Baroness to raise with me specific concerns around Southern Water after this Question.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)
Following Michael Sheen’s documentary showing that polychlorinated biphenyls are dumped at 14 sites across the UK, some of which are near Newport and Cardiff, what action are the Government taking to detect high levels of contamination both in drinking water and in farm produce?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
The Environment Agency works closely with a range of UK and international bodies to understand the different sources, because it is important that we understand where PFAS are coming from so we can have a proper risk-based approach to assessing and managing risks. That work is helping to inform the design requirements for additional water treatment schemes such as the one that we are discussing. Defra has made a commitment to protect public health and the environment while supporting innovation and economic growth. This is part of how we are going to work together to manage PFAS contamination.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, not only should reservoirs be clean but they should ideally be full. Last week, on Friday, Yorkshire officially entered a drought status due to low water levels in reservoirs and rivers. I know the noble Baroness believes that there should be more reservoirs, particularly more smaller reservoirs, so what can she and her department do to remove the barriers to more smaller reservoirs being built?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
The noble Baroness makes a really important point, and this year’s drought has demonstrated that we need better ways in which we can hold water, particularly on farm, so that we can manage resilience of food security. Defra is very cognisant of this. We are working hard with the farmers’ union, for example, around what we can do to increase food security. Obviously, holding water on farm is part of that.
Baroness Grender (LD)
My Lords, does the Minister accept that some of the underlying issues in this Oral Question are precisely why we need the long-promised clean water Bill, or whatever it is now going to be called, including urgent statutory protection for chalk streams? What immediate safeguards will apply before that legislation arrives? She expressed a lot of urgency about that previously. And when will the Bill be published?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
I cannot give the noble Baroness a date for when the Bill is coming, but it is something that we are working on very hard at the moment, because it is important that we bring it forward. We know there is a lot of anticipation around it, but it is also a very important Bill. The noble Baroness mentioned chalk streams. Building reservoirs is an important part of how we protect chalk streams. We need to stop the amount of abstraction that is taking place. Reservoir building is important if we are to reduce the need to take water from very sensitive environments.
Lord Watts (Lab)
My Lords, is it not the case that farmers and golfers use a lot of water inefficiently? Do we not need to do more to encourage them to be more effective?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
One of the really difficult questions around drought is who has access to water. Golf courses use an enormous amount of water, and there were some issues with some water companies and golf courses earlier this year. It is really an issue for the water companies and industry to sort among themselves, but, clearly, if there is a particular issue, government will step in.
Lord Grayling (Con)
Will the Minister accept that if our system for supporting agriculture was adjusted so that there was a proper biodiversity margin between agricultural land and rivers, we would significantly reduce the amount of effluent flowing from that land into rivers and improve river quality?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
I totally agree with the noble Lord, because that is something I have done myself through a catchment-sensitive farming grant. You can get grants like that. We fenced off our river to stop the cattle going down to it, to stop that kind of pollution going in, and we planted alongside it to, again, stop that pollution. You can get catchment-sensitive grants to look at things like that, and it is important that we encourage people to apply for them.
Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)
My Lords, that is a sticking plaster for as long as we are mixing industrial waste into sewage waste so that the PFAS are still coming through into the water in the runoff from the fields. What would the Minister say to that?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
Clearly, we need to resolve the pollution of PFAS into our waterways and streams as much as we can. The Government have brought forward a strategy around PFAS; we have to look at how we tackle this. We are also looking at the best ways of monitoring and at the sources, because if we do not fully understand where they are coming from, we cannot fully tackle it. But we are working hard in Defra to manage that.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, I begin by stating that I have deep respect for the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, however long she speaks. For about 40 years, she has campaigned dutifully for mainstream green and environmental issues, and sometimes I have found myself in agreement with her. However, I must say that I have nothing but contempt for the current Green Party leader, who is a despicable piece of work and not fit to have any role in public life in this country.
I have a question on regulations for the Minister—a simple one. Our current regulatory framework is too fragmented, and our regulators too unaccountable, to deal effectively with the issues raised today, as we have all seen with the Environment Agency and its failure to stop massive rubbish dumps in protected landscapes. What are the Government doing to review Defra’s 34 arm’s-length bodies—as we are proposing—to bring infrastructure, project delivery and nature recovery under more direct ministerial control?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
I am sure that the noble Lord is aware, as will be many noble Lords, that we carried out the Corry review to look at how the different arm’s-length bodies in Defra work, not just in the water industry but across the board. We need to work better, to stop things falling through the cracks and to make sure that regulators do what we want them to do and what they need to do. It should not always be focused just on finances; environment should also be taken into account, and we are working hard to make things more efficient and effective.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, first, I would like the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, to withdraw half of his comments in Hansard.
I say to the Minister that I still have not heard a way forward on this. These chemicals are highly dangerous, and there is no regulation to cover them at the moment. I repeat that we cannot trust Southern Water. Its Budds Farm wastewater treatment works was found in research conducted by the Marine Conservation Society to be releasing forever chemicals into the environment via treated effluent. We cannot keep allowing this. We have to put in regulation.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
There are two things that I would say to the noble Baroness. First, as she said, the scheme is going to take treated wastewater from Budds Farm wastewater treatment works. It will purify it to a high standard at a new water recycling plant before it is transferred to the reservoir. The water stored in the reservoir will subsequently be abstracted and conveyed to the Otterbourne water supply works for treatment and supply to customers. That would create a new drought-resilient source of water for the wider region, which is desperately needed. Secondly, we are asked all the time, “Why it is taking you so long to build reservoirs? Why have you not started one of the new nine reservoirs that you want? When are you going to complete it? Why has it been delayed?” Part of the reason we have a problem building new reservoirs in this country is that when we try, nobody wants them.
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