The UK Government’s plan for economic growth rightly covers important areas like R&D investment and new high-tech and green industries, but fails to address the need to raise productivity across all sectors of the economy.
This paper looks at the importance of further development and broadening of thinking on economic growth and reviews some of the current economic challenges that a new industrial policy would need to address. The paper also explores current policy thinking and the case for the adoption and implementation of a broader model to address the everyday economy and embrace new forms of intervention to deliver the desired results.
Key recommendations
- Policy needs to change and broaden to address the current economy and labour market through confronting productivity problems in everyday sectors and everyday jobs.
- The UK should establish and implement a broader approach for economic development and innovation strategy that encompasses the bulk of the economy and employment, including skills creation and utilisation, job quality, workplace innovation, digital adoption and exporting.
- There needs to be a focus on managerial capacity, improving the employment relationship, job quality and fair work.
- Design and develop integrated packages of diagnostic help, followed up by the growth of support services to aid business improvement and workplace innovation.
- Collect learnings from overseas practice, and from the efforts of the devolved nations on Fair Work and economic development.
- Close off access to employment practices that undercut labour standards and good employers by having labour regulation or an employment law enforcement regime.
- Implement carefully evaluated pilots to test out different approaches at local and sectoral levels.
- It is important to recognise that this is a long-term project and it will take time to generate cumulative effects on performance and outcomes.
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