One of the planks of the Conservative manifesto was the need for continuing austerity; one of the items outlined is a belief that spending by Government departments – excluding welfare – should be cut by £13billion over the next two years. After that, says the manifesto, the books should be balanced and expenditure will rise.
But the Government has also accepted the need to rebalance the UK's economy, so engineering design and manufacturing make a far larger contribution to the nation's GDP. And this rebalancing will need Government support.
Over the last decade or so, the Government – Conservative and Labour alike – has made a serious investment in science and technology. This work – started by Lord Sainsbury and continued by Lord Mandelson, who recognised from his time as a European Commissioner the benefit of support programmes – resonated with Vince Cable, the previous Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS).
Along the way, we've seen the establishment of the Technology Strategy Board – now Innovate UK – with a substantial budget available to help develop the UK's technology sector. And there is the recently established Catapult network.
Conservative ideology in the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s was that things should be left to 'the market'. Those on the right of the party couldn't understand the need for the Department for Trade and Industry – an earlier version of BIS – and pressed for its abolition. With the serious cuts planned for Government spending, will BIS be a major target again?
Sajid Javid, the new Secretary of State at BIS, was once Chancellor George Osborne's parliamentary private secretary and is regarded by some as his protégé. As part of the rebalancing of the economy, the Chancellor is committed to creating a Northern Powerhouse, as well as to supporting R&D into graphene, quantum computing and the like. All this will need continuing investment from BIS, amongst others.
So the first question to be asked of Javid is will he not only recognise the value of what has been done before but also what needs to be done and fight for the continuation of the good work?
