Economy: Growth

Lord Haskel Excerpts

Thursday 6th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Haskel]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, has form on industrial policy and I am delighted to see that he has carried it with him into this report. Instead of just market forces, he speaks about all aspects of industrial strategy and what it should look like. I particularly welcome his emphasis on co-operation—Government, business, technology, education, finance and society all working together and all interrelated, aligned in a trajectory directed towards growth, leaving no stone unturned. At least I think that is what the cover says.

He calls for all government departments to develop a growth agenda. He wants the Government to help industry to create winners. He wants the Government to tilt business towards British industry. I absolutely agree. He wants the financial sector to play its part in this to serve business and industry rather than itself. I agree.

He wants to help the education system to create the STEM graduates the noble Lord, Lord Baker, has just told us about. He wants to do something about the one in four adults who are functionally innumerate. Who could not agree? We are again reminded that we enjoy the fruits of investment in science and technology and research planted by earlier generations. Of course, we have a similar obligation to the generations that come after us.

The noble Lord speaks of localism. He wants to bring back the importance of place and the Government have responded with money for the LEPs. It is a pity they did away with the RDAs because then it would have happened a lot more quickly.

He explained why he wants to strengthen the local chambers of commerce but society now plays an even more important part in industrial strategy. It plays an important part in getting people to work together. During the past 20 years, we have developed clusters where we can stimulate and support each other and speed things up. We have developed knowledge transfer networks. Publicly funded science is becoming open source. The minimum wage is developing into a local living wage.

Some employers have kept people in work by reducing working hours to see them through the hard times instead of sacking everybody. We have some highly productive factories, not only because of investment, but also because employers and workers see themselves as one instead of two sides of industry.

Business now has to be socially responsible because society rejects clothing from sweat shops, it prefers products and services that are environmentally friendly and fair trade, and it rejects those firms whose tax arrangements are seen to be unfair. Marks & Spencer wins prizes for its Plan A.

We probably have to shine more light under this stone better to understand how society has to play its part in our industrial strategy. I think that goes beyond localism.