UK Modern Industrial Strategy

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Monday 30th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Leong (Lab)]

As usual, my noble friend makes a brilliant observation; she is spot-on. We have to focus on skills. This is another thing that is brought to my attention every time I meet with businesses in the UK, and with international businesses. They say, “You need to close the skills gap”. Skills are missing in certain places, and this strategy addresses that.

We are investing in technical excellence colleges through the further education scheme. As far as higher education goes, noble Lords know that four of the top universities are in this country. Businesses work with them and fund their research as well. We attract international business because of the higher education expertise and professionalism in this country.

Let me say more about skills. We have just announced £275 million of skills investment over three years, which forms a wider skills package made up of £75 million of government resource investment and £200 million of capital funding, made available from our new skills mission fund.

We committed in the industrial strategy to investing over £100 million to boost engineering skills. That is made up of £75 million of resource funding and £25 million of capital funding from the skills mission board. The Department for Business and Trade and the Department for Education have contributed funding for these engineering skills. We are also investing a further £187 million to support the digital skills package, which the Prime Minister announced at London Tech Week a few weeks ago. More details on defence skills will be set out in the forthcoming defence industrial strategy.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

I will follow my noble friend and ask about Cinderella geographies. Coastal East Sussex is included in south-east England, but the examples given of the south-east are the Solent and Oxford, which are both four hours away. How does a bit of England that is not currently mentioned in or connected to the industrial strategy find purchase with this policy and document? What would the Minister recommend as a strategy for coastal East Sussex in trying to become part of the industrial strategy? Will he draw to his colleagues’ attention the virtues of the British Council initiative Alumni UK as a way of building international networks for industrial strategy businesses?

[Lord Leong (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for that. I will mention the British Council’s Alumni UK to my noble friend—she is sitting on the Front Bench and I am sure she heard the noble Lord’s point. On coastal towns and rural areas, the industrial strategy covers everything. This industrial strategy is not place specific; it is based on sectors. For example, rural areas will benefit from it, with clean energy in Cornwall, advanced manufacturing and agritech in Lincolnshire, financial services in Norwich and east Norfolk, and life sciences in Coleraine. So we are right across the country. It is not rural or coastal; it applies right across the country based on the sector. For example, computer games are very much up in the north, so that covers some of the rural areas as well.

The Government believe strongly that rural and coastal areas offer significant potential for growth and are central to our economy. We are committed to improving the quality of life for people living and working in these areas. The Government have already committed £2.7 billion to support sustainable farming and nature’s recovery. This Government have also confirmed investment of over £1.9 billion over four years into broadband and 4G connectivity. It is shameful that we still cannot get wifi across every part of this country. We are doing something about that, and the Government are putting money into these sectors.