Industry and regional policy experts set out five...

• Aston University’s Professor David Bailey co-ordinates response of eight industry and regional policy experts to the Government’s consultation on the Industrial Strategy Green Paper 

Industry and regional policy experts from across the UK have set out five key ‘calls to action’ in response to the Government’s consultation on the Industrial Strategy Green Paper.

The proposal, co-ordinated by Professor David Bailey at Aston University, argues that ‘any new industrial strategy for the UK needs to link places, sectors and technologies and have a commitment of resources requisite to meet the scale of the challenge that the UK faces’.

It was submitted on behalf of the Regional Studies Association, a major international learned society that is concerned with the analysis of regions and regional issues. It features contributions from a total of eight specialists in industrial strategy and regional policy from several universities as well as the Regional Studies Association.

The key ‘calls to action’ are:

1. The UK needs to embrace opportunities offered by the Fourth Industrial Revolution (‘Industry 4.0’) for manufacturing and services, which is critical for the UK’s international competitiveness going forward.
2. Industrial Strategy needs to think beyond sectors alone. It needs to identify, nurture and diffuse the key cross-cutting technologies (e.g. digitalisation, internet of things, robotics and artificial intelligence) that have a ‘general purpose technology’ role across manufacturing and services.
3. Linked to this, industrial strategy needs to recognise and exploit such technologies by making them accessible to businesses in different regions.
4. To do this, industrial strategy needs to be developed regionally in a holistic sense (for example on skills, access to finance, clusters, supply chains and innovation) so as to enable policy to be better suited to the distinctive characteristics and advantages of different places. A key objective of such an approach should be to promote the tradable base of each region in the UK. 
5. There needs to be a meso-regional scale to industrial strategy bringing together sectors, technologies and place. The current geographical set up of LEPs is too limited and fragmented. This meso-regional scale can usefully build on developments in terms of Combined Authorities and initiatives such as the ‘Midlands Engine.’ (e.g. in connecting elements of a regional industrial strategy such as on supply chains and clusters).