Productivity

(asked on 9th January 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to improve labour productivity in the UK.


Answered by
Lord Henley Portrait
Lord Henley
This question was answered on 16th January 2019

Raising labour productivity is at the heart of the Government’s Modern Industrial Strategy. The strategy aims to improve labour productivity by encouraging innovation, developing high quality jobs, supporting UK businesses and fostering growth in all parts of the UK.

A year into the Industrial Strategy we have made significant progress towards these goals, including:

  • Investing substantially in skills – We are designing a National Retraining Scheme to support adults impacted by automation, investing £406 in STEM and technical education for people of all ages as well as introducing new T levels to provide a technical alternative to A levels, in addition to our reforms to apprenticeships.
  • The biggest increase in R&D funding ever – we have committed an extra £7bn by 2023/24, including £2.7bn already allocated to innovative programmes supporting industry and researchers through the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund.
  • Record investment in infrastructure with £37bn committed through the National Productivity Investment Fund by 2023/24. This includes £2.45bn for Transforming Cities and £1bn in digital infrastructure.
  • Publication of Nine Sector Deals, supporting billions in investment from the public and private sector and important sectoral reforms on issues such as technology diffusion and workforce diversity. A further three deals are being negotiated.
  • Announcement of the first ‘missions’ under the Grand Challenges, aiming to galvanise action on ambitious and specific goals in AI & Data, Clean Growth, the Future of Mobility and Ageing Society. This includes a second clean growth mission to decarbonise industrial clusters.
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