Four days after the Budget Statement, the government is to unveil today the white paper on industrial strategy, that seeks to tackle the UK’s economic challenges of the future.
Across the industry sectors the white paper is tensely awaited, since the government had claimed on Friday that the industrial strategy template would include a broad vision for the economy to unify major economic initiatives.
As reported in different online publications, the paper seeks to organise the UK’s economic challenges around five key themes.
- People and skills
- Ideas and innovation
- Physical & digital infrastructure
- The business environment, including access to finance and sector deals
- Growth around the UK, as well as setting out an ambition to build local industrial strategies
It was reported that business secretary Greg Clark, who will publish the white paper later today, believes the need for an industrial strategy is more important than ever against the backdrop of the announcement of the Budget Statement last week.
Alan Mak, MP for Havant and founding chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on the Fourth Industrial Revolution, said: ” The chancellor responded with a Budget that not only gets Britain ‘fit for the future’, but helps us get to the future first: driverless cars on the road by 2021, £500m for 5G networks, full fibre broadband and AI, a further £2.3m for R&D, and new funding for digital skills distance learning courses.”
In the Budget Strategy the Office for Budget Responsibility had halved its forecast of the UK’s long-term productivity trend to 1%., and the white paper is expected to note that the need for the UK to seize available opportunities has been made more important by the Brexit vote.
The document is also expected to reveal the government’s plans to set up a long-term strategic in four sectors seen as having the biggest growth potential which are construction, life sciences, automotive and AI.
