E-ministerial arrangements still in flux

A week after Gordon Brown's emergency reshuffle, the full new line-up of ministers with digital portfolios has yet to fall in to place. In the latest twist in a saga involving the departure of digital engagement minister, Tom Watson, and digital inclusion minister, Paul Murphy, Lord Carter, the communications minister charged with the Digital Britain programme, revealed today that he is standing down over the summer.

The Times reported that Carter, a former PR executive and head of Ofcom, is to leave the government for the private sector less than two years after being hired in Brown's 'government of all talents'.

Last week's reshuffle had confirmed Carter as one of 11 ministers in Lord Mandelson's new Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (which Whitehall officials stressed this week is to be pronounced 'biz' not 'debiz'). Carter's Digital Britain report, with widely trailed plans for extending broadband nationwide, is to be published on Tuesday (16 June).

Meanwhile, it is still not clear whether Mandelson or another of his colleagues will pick up the baton of digital inclusion minister.

Whitehall sources say the digital inclusion programme, previously run from the Wales Office under Murphy, is likely to be merged with the Digital Britain work. This would give Lord Mandelson the chance of announcing dotcom pioneer, Martha Lane Fox, as Britain's new digital champion. That would mark Mandelson's second stint in the job of e-minister - at the old Department for Trade and Industry in 1999, he was responsible for appointing the UK's first e-envoy, Alex Allan.