Politics Morning Star
Labour backbenchers fear Whitehall ‘inertia’ as they call for new reindustrialisation act
MORE than 90 Labour backbenchers have called on Prime Minister Andy Burnham to pass a new reindustrialisation act. The group argues that new laws are needed to set clear targets for creating jobs by r
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The group argues that new laws are needed to set clear targets for creating jobs by rebuilding the country’s manufacturing capacity and ensure ministers are held to account against them.
Mr Burnham has suggested that rebuilding Britain’s industrial capacity will be central to meeting his pledge to bring “good growth in every postcode.”
In a briefing paper seen by the Guardian, the backbenchers warn that decades of deindustrialisation and deregulation mean the government no longer has the detailed understanding of industry needed to make such a plan work.
They say: “The state has lost capacity and has acquired a worrying set of behaviours which will inhibit reindustrialisation.
“The state has become less knowledgable about the state of the economy and our businesses, unable to comprehensively plan and slow to make decisions.”
“If we do not plan for reindustrialisation, we cannot achieve it.”
The paper urges the PM to give the job of overseeing reindustrialisation to First Secretary of State Louise Haigh and base it at No 10 North, the Manchester outpost he established in July, which has already taken on some responsibility for growth policy.
It also argues that the National Wealth Fund — the arm’s-length body that invests in promising businesses — should be transformed into a reindustrialisation development corporation, whose primary job would be to provide capital for rebuilding British industry.
Group chairman Andy MacNae MP said that “there is a kind of inertia in government, within the Civil Service, within economic orthodoxy, that still says that growth policy is about cities — it’s about the places that are already doing well.”
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