The government's green paper Building our Industrial Strategy sets out proposals to improve living standards and economic growth by increasing productivity and driving growth throughout the country.
The government’s green paper Building our Industrial Strategy sets out proposals to improve living standards and economic growth by increasing productivity and driving growth throughout the country. As an overall objective, it sounds great when viewed from a jobs and economic perspective, but it begs the question: green growth or growth at any cost?
The proposals in the paper are structured around ten ‘pillars’:
- Investing in science, research and innovation.
- Developing skills.
- Upgrading infrastructure.
- Supporting businesses to start and grow.
- Improving procurement.
- Encouraging trade and inward investment.
- Delivering affordable energy and clean growth.
- Cultivating world-leading sectors.
- Driving growth across the whole country.
- Creating the right institutions to bring together sectors and places.
The paper reaffirms the government’s commitment to meeting targets under the Climate Change Act and supporting the shift to a low-carbon economy – although it stresses that this must only be at minimal cost to UK businesses, taxpayers and consumers. It is surprisingly silent, however, on the issue of resource productivity and the need to move to a circular resource economy. This seems like a missed opportunity. With the devaluation of sterling increasing the costs of imported materials, the need to extract maximum economic value from materials and resources multiple times over is a way of enhancing the competitiveness of UK businesses.
The government must use the industrial strategy to accelerate the UK’s transition to a low-carbon, resource-efficient economy; one that gives a progressive outlook for the UK’s future outside the EU. There is an opportunity, both here and in the forthcoming 25-year environment and carbon emissions reduction plans, to set long-term economic and environmental outcomes that fix the conditions to unlock investment, enhance natural capital and provide employment and export opportunities for UK business.
IEMA would welcome member views on the green paper. Please send these to [email protected] and IEMA will ensure that the environment and sustainability profession makes a positive contribution.
