Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (External organisation)

Description

Response to BEIS green paper, Building Our Industrial Strategy

History suggests the latest attempt to craft an 'industrial strategy' is destined to fail. To craft a successful strategy we need to learn the lessons of past success and: 1. Remove H.M. Treasury’s veto power by persuading it of the merits of borrowing to invest. 2. Embrace a balance sheet approach to national accounting, borrow to support much higher government investment in industrial strategy, and (via balance sheet accounting) recognise the likely long-run return on that investment. 3. Think more holistically, making industrial strategy more than just a set of specific policy ideas for raising industrial and commercial investment and productivity. Rather, industrial strategy should place those policies within a broader strategy for the modernisation of the economy, including supportive macro-economic policy. 4. Set specific targets for faster economic growth and better productivity that are endorsed by the whole government (and particularly by a Treasury that has been brought to support the need for an active, interventionist, and effective industrial strategy on a broad front). 5. Ensure that decisions in all areas of policy relevant the economy (not least on the level and form of government spending and taxation) are taken within the context of those targets

Period	7 Mar 2017
Held at	Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, United Kingdom