HC 62 answered before the deadline

The Commons Science, Innovation and Technology Committee published HC 62 (House of Commons paper 62), "Science diplomacy: Sovereignty, strategy, and the global race", on 7 July 2026. Under the two-month convention the government reply fell due on 7 September. The committee's Second Special Report, HC 652, records that the government response was received on 4 September 2026, three days before that date, and the committee published it on 15 September.⁠¹

Thirteen days after the report was published, the UK abolished DSIT (the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology), splitting its functions across the Cabinet Office and two new departments. Committee chair Chi Onwurah warned on 24 July that the closure would fragment oversight, and this briefing logged the response as due with no indication of which successor body would draft it. The reply came from the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade, so the obligation did pass to a successor. The gov.uk content API today returns no ministers at all for DSIT, while the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade returns a full ministerial team under Jonathan Reynolds.⁠²

The timing is unusual. This committee's three most recent government responses arrived 95, 98 and 227 days after the report they answered, so a reply inside the two-month convention is rare on that record.⁠³ This reply was received before the deadline but did not appear on the publications page until 15 September.

Machinery-of-government changes normally move an obligation from one letterhead to another. Here it moved to the business department, which answered on time, although the committee chair later said parts of the response did not fully address its recommendations.