Cable letter – Government ‘lacks a compelling vision’
Written by: Matthew Wrelton on 8 March, 2012You may remember my blog last month in which I drew attention to a letter from Vince Cable to the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister calling for a more long-term plan for industry. The original article and excerpts from the letter appeared in the FT (£), but the complete letter has now been leaked to the BBC and can be read here.
The full letter sheds further light on the concerns that the Business Secretary has about the government’s direction of travel with regards to growth. Whilst stating that they have ‘united around an economic strategy’, it is clear that he feels that the government could be going further to set out a more strategic vision of where the UK’s ‘future industrial capabilities should lie’. Significantly, he also makes a rather brutal assessment of some government policies focused on ‘identifying and supporting key technologies’ which he describes as ‘frankly, rather piecemeal’ and not being ‘followed through systematically’.
This letter will dominate the headlines for the next few days, but what is evident is that the call for a more strategic long-term industrial policy is something which is gaining momentum. In fact whilst some of the language the Business Secretary uses in the letter is surprising, he has been making the case publicly for an industrial strategy on a regular basis (see his recent IPPR speech for example).
Putting in place a long-term industrial policy is an inherently complex task and as Vince Cable concedes the term has a bad reputation in the UK. However, given the increasing competitiveness of the global economy, the UK’s economic standing cannot be taken for granted and we should therefore not get too sidetracked by an ideological debate on industrial policy. Instead, we should look objectively at what lessons can be learnt from past failures and also what competing nations are doing to give their economies a competitive edge.
Interestingly enough the Chancellor said in a speech to the EEF on Tuesday night that ‘this Government is unashamedly backing those parts of the economy that are a British success story’ and will support such industries to ‘maintain that edge’. It would appear therefore that there is some degree of coalition consensus on this. The real question it seems is less about whether we need a modern industrial policy, but instead what would this look like in practice?
Tags: growth, industrial policy, vince cable
9 March, 2012 at 8:30 pm
Mathew,
It’s not working at all! There is no growth, unemployment is rising, the Technology Startegy Board has been around since 2004 and has not produced a single major innovation. The main poroblem is that Vinve Cable, David Willets & Co have no engineering knowledge, and have no experienced practical skilled engineers on their teams. And Mark Prisk ?
About Mark Prisk and his automated Britain?
On the 6th March 2012 for a mere £750 or £245 for Intellect members, you could have heard Mark Prisk and a few others telling you that automation can improve productivity!
Siemens from Germany, Schneider from France, ABB from Sweden & Switzerland, Emerson & Eaton from the US, Danfoss from Denmark, and Misubishi & Omron from Japan.
In the real world we started automating about 1970 with CNC machines, to engineers it looked amazing as computer control looked like it would do anything. By 1980 things were moving, school kids were turning the lights on and off with the Sinclair ZX80 computer and then the BBC computer with its easy access to the machine code. I built a full sized XYZ gantry robot from scrap, and took a job in an oil platform fabrication yard implementing a £20 million automation program, designing automated handling of the heavy steel plates, robotic welding and computer aided design as the draughtsmens’ drawing boards were replaced by computer screens.
Alas between Margaret Thatcher and the unions they managed to wreck it all and 30 years later here we are, holding conferences to tell the UK that automation is the way forward!