British state ‘overbearing' ministers say as they lay out industrial overhaul
In the Industrial Strategy published on Monday, the Government has backed UK industries it thinks have the potential to grow, with the aim of creating jobs and prosperity across Britain and Northern Ireland.
Artificial intelligence (AI), offshore wind power, and electric vehicle batteries are among the sectors which feature.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer during a visit to Horiba Mira in Nuneaton to mark the launch of the Government's Industrial Strategy (Jacob King/PA)
The strategy aims to help realise Labour's mission pledge to create sustained economic growth, which ministers want to see become the highest in the G7.
In the strategy's foreword, alongside Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds, Sir Keir said that 'when new opportunities present themselves, Britain often finds itself too regulated to take advantage'.
The ministers added: 'The result is a state that is both overbearing and feeble, poorly serving an economy that has become too reliant on one place, too exposed to global volatility and too sluggish to take advantage of transitions like the move to homegrown clean energy'.
They said that the strategy marks a 'new approach' and accounts for a decade-long plan to make Britain an attractive country to invest in.
The industrial strategy focuses on eight areas.
As well as the main strategy, on Monday the Government also published five separate 'sector plans', with more details on distinct policy areas: advanced manufacturing, creative industries, clean energy, digital and technology, and professional and business services.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves (third from right) and Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds (right) during a visit to Nuneaton (Jacob King/PA)
Plans for the defence, financial services and life sciences sectors will come later.
The ministers said that the eight sectors had been 'identified as those best placed to create the wealth, jobs, and higher wages our country needs in every community'.
The five sector plans published on Monday emphasised the opportunities for growth across the regions and nations of the UK.
Edinburgh's robotics and agri-tech research hubs, and the space industry of the Oxford to Cambridge corridor featured among advanced manufacturing industries.
Onshore and offshore wind in south-west Wales, and heat pump producers in Northern Ireland feature in the clean energy sector plans, while Birmingham and Manchester's AI and cyber industries are highlighted in the plan for digital technology.
Several of the sector plans also address the changes which AI could have upon their industries.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer during a visit to Horiba Mira in Nuneaton, to mark the launch of the Government's Industrial Strategy (Jacob King/PA)
The creative industries for example, will need to 'embrace new technology', one document says, insisting the Government will maximise the value of AI, while 'protecting and incentivising human creativity'.
The strategy includes details on several ways the Government wants to make it easier for firms to do business, such as tackling 'high industrial electricity costs' and reducing 'regulatory burdens'.
It also says ministers will 'remove planning barriers' and 'ensure our tax system supports growth'.
As part of the plans, energy costs for businesses will be cut by scrapping green levies to help them compete with foreign rivals.
From 2027, a new British Industrial Competitiveness Scheme will cut costs by up to £40 per megawatt hour for over 7,000 manufacturing firms by exempting them from levies on bills including the renewables obligation, feed-in tariffs and the capacity market.
The strategy comes after the latest figures indicated the economy shrank by 0.3% in April, the biggest monthly contraction in gross domestic product for a year-and-a-half, as businesses felt the impact of Donald Trump's tariffs and domestic pressure as a result of hikes to firms' national insurance contributions.
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It's not an impressive saga - due to backing the wrong options, supporting declining industries at great cost, or failing to do enough for those showing most promise. And in doing so, there hasn't been much of a consistent future, according to the new industrial strategy, is about championing eight sectors - for support, reducing some costs (primarily energy), boosting trade, optimising the market, getting obstacles out the way, and getting enough recruits in place with the necessary in government jargon as the IS-8, these include clean energy (that means renewables and nuclear), advanced manufacturing, digital and technology, defence, life sciences, the creative sector, financial services and professional and business economy has an interest in energy-intensive industries seeing their bills cut by quarter - around 7,000 firms making, for instance, steel, chemicals, cars, glass, ceramics and cement. But it's not the main outcome for Scotland could be in the sweet spot for other elements of this strategy across all the sectors targeted for support, if all the published strategy's intentions get followed up, and if UK and Scottish governments can collaborate on joined-up policy. There's defence, including naval shipbuilding on the Clyde and Forth and missiles and radar in and around Edinburgh. Clydeside has a world-leading role in making small satellites. There's finance, in which Edinburgh and Glasgow jointly represent an important cluster for remains a lot of petro-chemicals going on at creative industries include Dundee's gaming and Edinburgh's universities around Scotland punch above their weight, notably on life sciences, spinning out digital and technology firms, and playing a big part in attracting international strategy brings a reminder of a Spending Review commitment to reinstate £750m of funds for a super-computer in Edinburgh. Clean energy Clean energy is the one worth watching most closely. It has the potential to transform much of the Scottish economy as well as the view out to sea and across the landscape where more pylons will requires co-operation from the Scottish government on faster planning, on which there's already some agreement, and the new strategy aims at an accelerated route to grid connections for growth the north of Scotland is set to produce much of the wind resource, there is an incentive to locate the most energy-intensive industries close to that resource, thus reducing the need for all those part of that is set to be the Acorn project of carbon capture and storage, centred on centres could be a feature, as well as making hydrogen energy from Scotland's abundant wind power and fresh may be strategic sites chosen, most likely by competition, to get government backing for clearance and pre-emptive grid links. Co-ordinating policy between Holyrood and Westminster is more likely to founder on nuclear energy, at least so long as the SNP runs the show in has opposed new nuclear power for decades, which hasn't been much of an issue while Torness and Hunterston have generated through their changing. The move to smaller, modular nuclear reactors could be part of the energy mix in Scotland, which is why the Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, chose the Industrial Strategy launch day to visit Torness power station in East Lothian and point to the jobs and investment that could come from the Scottish government embracing a new generation of nuclear a point of difference between Labour and the SNP, and enthuses industrial trade unions. But the SNP can point to the relatively high cost of nuclear power and to its very long legacy of radioactive SNP government also has a party policy of urging defence industries to diversify to more peaceful products. Labour has also taken aim at that, in an era of fast-increasing defence spend and opportunity to see that grow the Spending Review promised six munitions factories, always available to back up Britain's defence needs. Scotland could hope to secure one of them, but that might require a change of heart in Holyrood, to embrace the business of making UK industrial strategy calls for Scotland to have a growth fund for defence. You can probably see how all this might play into next year's Holyrood ought to be easier progress to made through collaboration on skills, mostly devolved to Holyrood but with signs that Westminster wants to do more on Holyrood's turf. Oil and gas skills On training, the strategy has been met with warnings from the oil and gas sector, including its training body are pointing to the gap between declining jobs for those with oil and gas skills and the rise in employment for those in renewable energy. That strategy requires joined-up government as well. And with Whitehall's hostility to further oil and gas drilling, the energy lobby argues that it doesn't look very also a big decision yet to come with big implications for investment in offshore wind due "shortly" from the UK government - whether to change the single GB market for power to one with zonal prices. That could cut prices in Scotland, but at the expense of hostile responses have come from those sectors that don't gain from this strategy. If government picks winners and priority sectors, it relegates others or it makes of the strongest criticism is from hospitality, with its trade body saying today that this shows the government once again failing to realise the damage being done to the industry, following rampant price inflation, higher payroll tax and a higher minimum the Scottish government comes the response that parts of this were already in the innovation strategy set out more than three years ago by Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes. She is concerned that energy price cuts for industry won't happen for two less welcome parts will require Holyrood ministers to have a closer look at the detail and the implications - economic and political.
