Only one week after changing the name of the UK government’s Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) to the Department for Productivity, Energy and Industry (DPEI), the department has reverted to its former name.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Alan Johnson, the new head of the department, explained that acronyms already used to refer to the DPEI included ‘dippy’, and his position as Productivity, Energy and Industry Secretary being referred to as ‘penis’. Johnson emphasised that the idea to rebrand the department the DPEI was not his.
While business leaders had criticised the loss of the word ‘trade’ in the renaming of the DTI, the importance of energy policy is once again no longer highlighted in the department’s name.
