A UK Strategy for Enterprise & Industry

Whilst attending a conference on the subject of energy and climate change a couple of months ago, I commented that what the UK needed to properly tackle these issues was a good old-fashioned industrial strategy. Now I want to address the issue of climate change at my other blog - http://janetmackinnon.wordpress.com/ - and focus here on the issues of UK enterprise and industry.

Following my conference contribution - not greatly welcomed by some of the organisers it afterwards transpired ! - I was approached by a youngish man who, I seem to remember, worked for a government funded-agency involved in energy conservation. I had used the analogy of the Greater London Industrial Strategy, produced shortly before the abolition of the Greater London Council in the mid-1980s, and about the time I started my career in area regeneration. The young man told me that he partly agreed with what I'd said, but felt I needed to be more private-sector orientated.

This comment surprised me for 2 reasons. On a personal level, I've been self-employed for some 80% of my working life, and, therefore, in this "private sector". Secondly, the young man seemed to have forgotten - and this is very worrying because I suspect he is not alone - that a large part of the UK banking sector is now publicly owned, and the sector as whole has now been bailed out by our Government to the tune of £850 billion as mentioned in my previous post.

With this level of government intervention - unimaginable in the days of old "Red" Ken Livingstone's GLC - I would suggest that a comprehensive UK strategy for enterprise and industry is required at the present time more than at any other since the end of World War II. This should clearly identify the role of strategic sectors, such as banking and energy supply, in the context of wider economic, social, security, and environmental objectives.

Of course such as strategy would involve partnership between the public, private and non-governmental sectors. However, elected government should take the lead - as the GLC did - so that the citizens of this country can have some influence and accountability in the process. This would, of course, require a considerable cultural change, because it is precisely the absence of real accountability which has brought us to the state in which we all presently find ourselves.