The UK Government has published its Industrial Strategy – see https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/the-uks-modern-industrial-strategy-2025 . It claims the Industrial Strategy is a 10-year plan to increase business investment and grow the industries of the future in the UK. It says the Strategy will make it quicker and easier for business to invest and will provide the certainty and stability needed for long-term investment decisions, but this is mainly hogwash.
With politics in such chaos at present (it is uncertain who might win the next General Election) betting on stability in government would be rash. But it might be worthwhile to skim the executive summary. The document is short on specifics although it does point to certain things that the government intends to tackle – such as the burden of regulation, the speed of planning, the high cost of industrial electricity and the reduction in regulatory burdens to speed innovation – previous governments have had such objectives but have conspicuously failed to achieve them. Why? Because the political leadership has been weak and the civil service has been adept at resisting change. In addition we are a nation of “nimbys” – full of people who oppose revolution in any form.
Even when some change is supported, implementation tends to be abysmal, as has been highlighted by the recent debacle at HS2. Originally planned to run from London to Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester the last two arms have axed but the cost will still be more than £100 billion – a quite fantastic figure.
This is a management problem in essence but the Government thinks that throwing money at the problems will resolve the difficulties – such as a new £500 million “Local Innovation Partnership Fund”. Socialist governments are always adept at spending money but not on how to manage where it is spent.
In summary I have no hope that the latest “Industrial Strategy” will improve the UK economy.
Postscript: This is what the AIC had to say on the Government’s proposals, which I agree with: Richard Stone, Chief Executive of the Association of Investment Companies (AIC), said: “It’s encouraging to see the government recognise VCTs’ important role in the venture ecosystem. VCTs could do even more to support the government’s growth ambitions if they had greater freedom to invest in scale-ups. We’d like the government to increase the investment limits and abolish the age limits for VCT investments. This would allow VCTs to effectively mobilise capital to invest in more British companies with great growth potential.”
Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://x.com/RogerWLawson )
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