Business Secretary Alok Sharma is creating five new business-focused groups to help Britain’s economy recover from the Covid-19 pandemic and create new job opportunities.
Beginning this week (8 June), the Business Secretary will chair the first meetings of new ‘recovery roundtables’ bringing together businesses, business representative groups and leading academics.
With the ambitious aim of creating “a cleaner, greener, more resilient economy” and a raft of new job opportunities, the working groups will consider measures to support economic recovery and ensure Britain has the right skills and opportunities in place over the coming 18 months.
They will also explore key domestic and global challenges to support a green and resilient recovery and ensure the country is at the forefront of new and emerging industries.
Focused on five key themes, each group will explore how business can work with government to deliver economic growth and jobs:
- The Future of Industry: How to accelerate business innovation and leverage private sector investment in research and development
- Green Recovery: How to capture economic growth opportunities from the shift to net zero carbon emissions
- Backing new businesses: How to make the UK the best place in the world to start and scale a business
- Increasing opportunity: How to level up economic performance across the UK, including through skills and apprenticeships
- The UK open for business: How to win and retain more high value investment for the UK
This initiative looks to build on the close engagement between the UK’s business community, the Business Department and across Whitehall in the government’s response to the pandemic.
This includes five new ministerial-led taskforces to develop further plans for how and when closed sectors can safely reopen, following the publication of the Prime Minister’s roadmap out of lockdown.
Secretary of State for Business Alok Sharma commented: “The output from this initiative will feed directly into the government’s work on economic recovery and will help deliver the commitments we made to the British people only last December, which now take on an even greater sense of urgency and importance.”
The membership of the five working groups have yet to be published, with each group expected to consist of approximately 20- 25 participants and be representative of UK industry.
*Header image courtesy of Depositphotos
