BEIS

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) was the UK Government department responsible for business environment, industrial strategy, energy policy, Science and innovation from 2016 until 2023. Under Boris Johnson's government restructuring in February 2023, BEIS was dissolved and its functions split across three successor departments: the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT, which took AI, research and digital), the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), and the Department for Business and Trade (DBT).

BEIS is referenced in the context of the AI and Future of Work Unit announced on 18 May 2026, as some of the policy threads the unit draws on originated under BEIS's industrial strategy work . BEIS was the sponsoring department for Innovate UK, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) and much of the innovation funding architecture now operating under DSIT and DBT.

For readers encountering references to BEIS in current UK AI and innovation policy documents, it is a legacy label for functions now distributed across DSIT (tech, Science, AI), DESNZ (energy) and DBT (business, trade). Innovate UK and UKRI sit under DSIT as of 2023, meaning the competitions and research programmes they run are now funded through DSIT's budget rather than BEIS's. The split was designed to give technology and AI policy a dedicated ministerial home, which DSIT now provides.