It has been derided as the Frankenstein’s monster of Whitehall: an ungainly collection of limbs, animated in madness, its fleeting autonomy as tragic as it is doomed. That its current political head is also reportedly being readied for the chop by the rival that pipped her to the top job has made the narrative irresistible.
So it is that one of Westminster’s most persistent rumours is that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and culture secretary Lisa Nandy are both heading for the breakers’ yard. Dig a little deeper, however, and there are plenty of reasons to question whether either of these moves makes as much sense as the rumour-mongers suggest.
It is true that it has not been difficult to find criticisms of Nandy in her role since July. The House has heard MPs, peers and stakeholders all complain about her performance, often unprompted. Several say she is a talented politician simply unsuited to this particular job. Paul W Fleming of performing arts union Equity notes he had to wait 200 days for a 30-minute meeting with her and two other unions.
There is a history: since Keir Starmer won the Labour leadership against Nandy, there have been regular rumours of his unease about her standing in the top team. Talk of her imminent demotion proved correct when she was moved from shadow levelling up secretary to the international development brief in 2023. The way she handled that put her in the leadership’s good books, however, and she was elevated again when Labour entered government.
Nandy’s allies say they are confident that the Sunday Times’ claim DCMS will be abolished so she can be fired will not bear out. They describe briefings against her as “frustrating” and “undermining” in the same way they have been for education secretary Bridget Phillipson – a link made by those who think it is no coincidence that both of those currently under fire are northern women. It has prompted many female MPs to revive complaints of a “boys’ club” in No 10 and the cabinet. “The boys are trying to take out the competition,” says one senior Labour MP.
So, could a Labour government really wield a chainsaw, Elon Musk-style, against DCMS? While the department’s champions say it is small, nimble and punches above its weight, critics paint it as a ministerial waiting room.
“Certainly, it was true under the last government: they tended to put people in the department who were either going somewhere else quite soon or were just moved there because they didn’t know where to put them,” says Labour peer Lord Brennan, who has devoted his time in parliament to supporting the arts.
“It’s harder, probably, to find a senior politician who hasn’t run DCMS than to find one who has,” agrees Jeremy Wright, a former culture secretary himself, having done the job for a year under Theresa May.
Formerly the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, Rishi Sunak’s decision to pare off digital in 2023 is proof for some that cultural sectors are strong enough to stand alone. Others counter that stripping DCMS of its digital arm made it irrelevant.
“If there’s already a sense that, ‘Oh, DCMS is a cuddly department, it doesn’t really do serious stuff,’ if you take out something that everyone knows is serious and pass it to a different department, you tend to reinforce that impression,” says Wright.
“Every minister and every permanent secretary would like a slightly larger empire,” he adds. “So, I’m sure they can all see opportunities if DCMS were to be rendered limb from limb and spread out around the rest of government.”
“The work it takes to dismantle a department with so many nooks and crannies is enormous”
Counter-intuitively, carving up DCMS might be welcomed by some stakeholders: if a larger department became responsible for sport, for example, scrutiny of the Premier League could slip under the radar.
“I would have thought that some of the people who are against a football regulator would be quite keen to see the department go, because the focus is then diluted significantly in some other department,” says a former special adviser who was in DCMS under Sunak. “The Premier League might be quite pleased to get rid of the department, because the focus the government has on them will be significantly reduced.”
The creative industries are not wholly united on this question either – with some thinking their organisations would be better supported by a larger department.
“People in the creative industries have mixed opinions about this, interestingly,” says Brennan. “Some of my friends say to me, ‘Well, maybe it would be better if the creative industries were in a stronger department, like the business department – they would have more heft in Whitehall.’”
With the chancellor desperate to find savings, cutting a department – its staff, HR functions and press office – appears logical. According to DCMS’s annual accounting report, the department spent £129m on staff in 2023-24. In the previous tax year, the department spent around 83% of its administrative budget on staff.
But looking to make efficiencies by abolishing it may be a fool’s errand, says Wright: “You can save some money by abolishing a government department, but inevitably you don’t save as much as you think you do, because you need to transfer the functions elsewhere.”
“The reality is it won’t save any money at all,” agrees the former spad. “There’s a very little amount of money which is corporate overheads or staffing. If they’re going to get rid of the department, they’ll be shifting a relatively small number of civil servants into another department.”
Sunak’s team tried to find cost savings in DCMS, to no avail. “Most of the money that the department spends goes to arms-length bodies and is in the form of grants,” the former spad explains. “We looked at reducing some of the grants when we were there, and it was just too difficult, because if you start taking away some of the arts and culture grants, you’re reducing money that goes to the Crown Jewels – the national museums and community museums and theatre groups around the country.”
Both agree that the department punches above its weight. A DCMS report estimated that the sector contributed an estimated £167.4bn to the UK economy in 2023 – 7.1 per cent of the UK’s Gross Value Added.
“Even with Rishi, who was the most pro-tech prime minister ever, DCMS was not seen as a footnote to the economic policy – it was a core part,” says the former spad.
“The DCMS sectors are massive growth sectors,” adds Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee chair Caroline Dinenage. “Creative industries alone are worth £136bn to the UK economy. They’re growing at twice the rate of the rest of the economy.”
Some highlight how arduous the exercise of scrapping DCMS would be. “I know the Treasury would be delighted to get its hands on control of lottery money etc., but the work it takes to dismantle a department with so many nooks and crannies is enormous,” says a former culture political adviser to Labour.
DCMS, more so than other departments, benefits from a bedrock of institutional knowledge in its civil servants, adds another former Conservative spad.
“Because of the nature of the content that comes from DCMS – the legislation that it’s responsible for – you find that people enjoy it and feel passionate about it, and they’re there for a reason,” they say. “You don’t have as much churn in DCMS.”
Critics of the idea DCMS should be broken up also argue this is the worst possible time to do it – when many creatives are seeing their work used by bosses without their consent and data-scraped by AI platforms without their knowledge.
The Labour Party is perhaps a more natural champion of the cultural industries than the Conservatives; in the run-up to the election it promised jobs, growth and educational opportunities for the arts – a reversal of the “hollowing out” they say took place under the Tories.
But now Labour is in power, the prime minister has put tech front-and-centre of his growth plans, and the government’s policies to encourage AI have put it at odds with creatives.
The government has proposed an ‘opt-out’ model for copyright, which would enable AI models to be trained on large data sets unless their creators actively choose to prohibit such use. Opponents say the move away from automatic copyright risks the livelihoods of many in the sector.
In this context, the former spad says scrapping DCMS would be like the government “sticking two fingers up at them again to be like, ‘Oh, well, you’re obviously not a priority enough to even have a department that represents this contribution that you make.’”
The government recently suffered another defeat in the House of Lords over the data (use and access) bill. On 19 May, peers voted 289 to 118 to amend the bill in a way that would require tech companies to provide copyright owners with accurate and accessible information on how their work has been used by AI.
“We are feeling a little bit frustrated as a committee about the lack of actual movement within the department in terms of making decisions on things”
Brennan, who defied the Labour whip to vote for the amendment, says the Sunak decision to take digital out of DCMS in 2023 has left his party’s government in a weaker position today.
“A lot of the problems that the government’s been having with the Data Use and Access Bill could have been avoided had it still been within DCMS, because they would have had that understanding and focus in the creative industries, and also a bit more heft within Whitehall.”
Wright adds that giving Chris Bryant jobs in departments representing two sides of the AI vs creatives battle – as creative industries minister in DCMS, and data protection and telecoms minister in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) – was a mistake.
“Had he not been a minister straddling both departments, I think you could have seen a much more sensible representation of each argument, because DSIT should stand there for the interests of the AI developers, and DCMS should stand there for the interests of creatives,” he says.
“This was an example of where it could have demonstrated its worth. But I think the decision to appoint this particular minister with a combination of portfolios has made that harder.”
DCMS sources dismiss the idea ministers should have put up a stronger fight for the sector, arguing that a ‘creative versus AI’ fight would not “deliver for people in the long run”. Working hand in hand with DSIT produces the best outcome, they insist, because the solution must be something the whole government can get behind. “This is the way Lisa prefers to operate – get on with it, roll up your sleeves, rather than have a big row.”
But in the age of AI and automation, Wright and others maintain the cultural sector should be better-supported.
“Human beings will see more and more done by automation. They will have more and more leisure time. They will have to think about how the balance of life changes, away from being in the office doing work ‘x’ number of hours a day, towards how you live a more balanced life,” he says. “The DCMS sectors really come into their own in helping to redress that balance.”
And yet there has been no shortage of other items in the DCMS in-tray. Confronted with the claim Nandy has achieved too little, her allies point out she recently oversaw the successful VE Day programme of events and announced the popular new Universal Studios theme park project with the PM and Chancellor.
She has also been focused on tackling misconduct in the TV industry in the wake of Gregg Wallace and Russell Brand allegations, while driving the government’s main piece of legislation – the Football Governance Bill – which has become a harder task since the Tories started opposing it.
One of Nandy’s first moves was closing down the National Citizen Service started by David Cameron. “It just wasn’t working for most people in the country – they hadn’t heard of it,” says a source close to the Culture Secretary. The department is now working on a youth strategy that will take into account the themes of the Netflix hit Adolescence and deal with loneliness among young people, with further details promised soon.
Dinenage, the Conservative chair of the Culture Committee, is nonetheless critical. There are “lots of reviews, round tables, consultations, and asking people what they think”, she says, “but very little in the way of positive action”.
“We are feeling a little bit frustrated as a committee about the lack of actual movement within the department in terms of making decisions on things, about actually bringing forward policies or strategies that would support the sectors that we represent,” Dinenage tells The House.
Still, Nandy’s allies are clear in their view she would be a serious loss to government. “Anyone who thinks tinkering with Whitehall departmental structures or moving one of the government’s most effective communicators – those people are part of the problem, not the solution,” says Luke Francis, a former political adviser to Lisa Nandy who is now associate partner at Pagefield.
“The local election results were a warning shot for this government: focus on the issues that really matter to voters and start delivering real change, or risk handing the keys of No 10 to Nigel Farage and Reform UK.”
Nandy has been busy “turning her department into an engine for economic growth”, according to her former adviser, and “remains one of the government’s most adept and authentic message carriers – particularly with those target voters that Labour needs to win back at the next election”.
With Nandy splitting her time between London and the DCMS headquarters in Manchester, some attribute the briefing against her to “Westminster personality politics” that puts too much emphasis on presenteeism in Whitehall.
As a Labour MP in opposition, Nandy was best-known in the party for her focus on Britain’s forgotten towns. Now, given the time to develop her work further, allies are making the case for her to stay in the Cabinet on the basis she can use DCMS to promote the ‘politics of place’ in a contribution to Labour’s fight against Reform.
Sienna Rodgers is deputy editor and Sophie Church is senior reporter at CSW's sister publication The House, where this story first appeared