Review of Business Cases submitted to Government in January 2024

A year ago, the Prime Minister set up the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) with a mission to make the UK the most innovative economy in the world and cement our place as a science and technology superpower.

To do this effectively relies on us building a department that is equipped with the right capabilities. In particular, we must aspire to be faster and more agile because we need to respond to rapidly accelerating technological development right across our remit.

I am the Accounting Officer for DSIT, with personal responsibility for justifying our use of public funds. I take that responsibility seriously, and we should not be afraid of assessing spending proposals thoroughly and robustly. However, we know that our business case processes have become too cumbersome, and are particularly ill-suited for the deliberate risk-taking that is necessarily involved in spending money on R&D.

This is why I am very grateful to Lord Willetts for his thorough examination of our business case process and for his practical suggestions for how we can improve. I am personally committed to making this change real in DSIT, taking advantage of this moment to help us shift to faster, simpler, and more decisive oversight of our expenditure. This will require us all to work differently. I hope this change will also free up time for our people to focus on thinking and delivering, in both the core Department and our public bodies.

The publication of this report today, alongside the Government Response to the Tickell Review of Research Bureaucracy, signals our desire to improve the system on all fronts: expediting grants, accelerating investment decisions, reducing micromanagement, and minimising overhead burdens.

Finally, although the scope of Lord Willetts’ review has been DSIT’s use of business cases, I hope these changes will have much wider impact, serving as a blueprint for how Government can improve and streamline its business case processes so that we can all deliver better outcomes for the taxpayer.