Industrial Strategy

Gregor Poynton Excerpts

Thursday 12th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Liam Byrne]

The hon. Gentleman makes a really important point. We have heard time and again—we heard it in relation to life sciences, defence and clean energy—that we have some of the best thinkers in the world, but they often struggle to get the start-up finance or the scale-up finance they need to turn those ambitions into new businesses. As someone who spent four years building a business before I was in the wrong place at the wrong time and got elected to this House, I know that what small businesses need to grow are sales. That is why we need to be doing a much smarter job of marrying public contracts with access to scale-up finance, but that will take the institutions we have today working very differently in the future.

Perhaps our most shocking evidence session was on the subject of public procurement, when the chief commercial officer of His Majesty’s Government was just not clear how many jobs, how much economic growth and what levels of wages were driven by £1 of GDP. That is simply not good enough. I hope that there is cross-party consensus about these reforms because, ultimately, this is a once in 50 years moment. Our recommendations should command cross-party support, because that is how we ensure that they are sustainable for the long term.

[Gregor Poynton (Livingston) (Lab)]

I echo the comments of the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (John Cooper) about working across the parties—this is about growth—and about the Chair driving this forward. The 10 tests we have outlined are about how the document has a real-world impact. For me, two of the tests are clear. First, how does an industrial strategy galvanise action across the Government? With previous industrial strategies, good as they may well have been, Departments other than Business did not see it as their responsibility to deliver. We must make sure that the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, the Department for Transport and so on have ownership too and responsibility for delivering the strategy. I am keen to get my right hon. Friend’s comments on that. Secondly, how does this industrial strategy create a positive operating environment so that boardrooms in the UK and across the world see the UK as a place to invest and do business? Again, I am keen for his comments on that.

[Liam Byrne]

I am grateful for that question. Again, the report is a lot stronger for the insights my hon. Friend was able to bring to what was a very sustained inquiry. We must recognise that two problems have bedevilled industrial strategies in this country in the past. One is stop-start—we get some progress, but then we stop, and then we think again. That point was made, with some power, by Greg Clark, whose work I commend and whose evidence I want to highlight.

This is about building a different kind of partnership for a different kind of economy. We have tremendous strengths: we love the rule of law; we are politically stable; we are an open trading economy; and we are a science superpower. This is a great place to do business, but if we are to become the world’s favourite place to invest, we must change the way that the Government and the private sector work together. If we get it right, the Industrial Strategy Council could be exactly that place, but the offer our Committee makes to the business community is that where things get stuck, we are here to help.