Welcome to the final panel in today’s session as we throw a spotlight on industrial strategy. Thank you very much indeed to our witnesses for coming along to give evidence today. The purpose of today is to throw a spotlight on particular aspects of industrial strategy that we are a bit concerned about. There are a couple of cross-cutting issues that we are worried about, and there are a few sectors that we are worried about. We are principally worried about energy costs when it comes to cross-cutting issues, but we are also concerned about the governance of industrial strategy. We are really grateful to you for spending some time with us today. Clare Barclay, perhaps I could start with you. We met about 14 months ago. That was early on in your tenure as chair of the Industrial Strategy Council. Give us a sense of the stars you are steering by. Is it growth? Is it living standards? When thinking about industrial strategy, what are the metrics that we are trying to deliver now?

When we met before, it was three weeks in after the council had been established. We had not published the strategy at that point, so it was very early days. Subsequent to that, we have worked very closely to influence the strategy itself. We are now, based on the mandate letter that has been given to us, focused on a few key areas, such as market dynamism and skills, which we can perhaps go into. We are also focused on the monitoring and evaluation to make sure that what the Government published is executed. It is still quite early days on that as well, given that this is a 10-year strategy and it was published in June. The focus of the council as an independent council—remember that business, academia and unions are represented on the council—is to think about things that are going to drive growth and productivity, resulting in a stronger economy, good jobs, etc. It is those things. The monitoring and evaluation part, in partnership with the Government, looks at the way that we are going to measure that, which we are in the process of doing at the moment.

When you were on the board of Microsoft, you would not accept anything that was so vague. You would be seeking from your business some pretty hard metrics to deliver against. You mentioned two sets of metrics there, growth and productivity. Is that basically the way you judge success?

There is a set of metrics that we are currently reviewing, which go across all the indices of the plan. Part of the next Industrial Strategy Council meeting that we have will be to review and sign those off. We could look to share those as a follow-up as needed.

You are basically surveying a battery of different metrics in order to take a decision in the forthcoming months about what to pick.

Yes. Remember that the metrics of the industrial strategy plans are set by the Government. Our job is to look at all the metrics and make sure that we believe there is enough robustness in the way the plans are being executed that we feel confident that they will be executed well for the country.

What does that add up to? Does it add up to higher rates of growth, higher levels of productivity or growing export markets?

Yes, that is the intention.

What are the numbers that it adds up to? I guess I am asking how I am going to judge, as Chair of this Committee, whether the industrial strategy is delivering. One of the things that I am going to look at is your report, but what are the numbers that we should be looking at to make a judgment about whether this is going well or not?

We do not have that level of specificity at this point because we are still in the process of looking at those again, which we will review at the next meeting. That will be published in the annual report, which we will publish at the end of the year.

You mentioned that one of the things you are looking at is skills. When we look at co-ordinated market economies around the world, they co-ordinate different things from the things that are on your list. They will often look at the way that public procurement is used and how it is backed up by public finance institutions. They will look at input costs such as energy. They will look at input factors such as innovation, as well as the labour piece that you are looking at. Just give me a sense of what kind of latitude you have to advise and grip strategies around procurement, finance, energy and innovation.

Maybe some of the others can comment on this in a minute as well. We are not focused specifically on public procurement. Certainly, from the businesses I speak to, if you are thinking about scale-ups and start-ups, for example, they want to make sure that the country procures in a way that is attractive to them. We will look at finance. We are looking at energy. We are looking at skills. All the areas that you have talked about are definitely core to the things that we are addressing.

As we look out at Government, we do not see any co-ordination of procurement, public finance institutions, UKRI and the step-up in public finance for research and development, and energy costs. We see policy incoherence in a way that is not joined up in particular around the 4,300 high-grade firms that we have in this country, which create 20% of employment. Is that what you see?

Yes.

At least we are on the same page there.

We are nearly a year into this now. Where are we doing well in terms of implementing the strategy? Where could more progress be made?

The industrial strategy was published in June, so it is not quite a year yet.

It is nearly a year.

Co-ordinating that across all the Departments, as you referenced in some of the previous sessions, is not an easy task. The fact that we have a published industrial strategy, which looks at some of the things that will drive the eight industrial sectors, is a positive step. There are still many things that we need to make more progress on. I probably do not need to repeat the challenges in the energy sector. You heard that very well from the previous session. The interventions on BICS go some way, but we would say the system and the whole energy process need to be reformed. The announcement from the Secretary of State recently on gas and electricity was welcome. You heard that very well in terms of the level of stress that that is causing in the system. If you think of another industry such as the technology sector—you mentioned the scale-ups and start-ups—we have to take advantage of many of the strengths that we have as an economy, particularly with the pace of AI and change that is going on. If we do not speed up the access to finance and some of the other gnarlier issues, such as pension reform, we will not retain many of those businesses. If you think about the change that is going on in the industry overall, in the last session, the automotive industry talked about skills. The skills thing is really a challenge as we think about the pace of change that is going on. That is another area where we feel like we have to have an intervention. We are partnering very closely with Skills England as the job plans are being created. That is work in progress now, but that needs to be addressed in order to remain competitive. Kate, I do not know whether you wanted to add anything to that.

I will just come in on a couple of the skills points. To answer your question, Justin, about what has gone well, as Clare said, we have a strategy. Despite continued challenges with co-ordination, we can see that it is driving decisions across Government. You heard that a little bit from the colleagues from the automotive sector before. It is clear there is a decision to back automotive in some parts of Government. In the choices and the analysis that Skills England has done, this is very much set out across the industrial strategy sectors. That is important. It is also driving some decisions across UKRI. The two things that we have been saying consistently, certainly in my role on the Industrial Strategy Council and more broadly across the council, are energy costs and job plans. On energy costs, as Clare has just set out, we have moved the dial, but we have not moved it in any way nearly far enough. There are excluded sectors such as ceramics. There is far further to go. The jobs plans are the critical bit, particularly for us, about how you translate the industrial strategy into tangible outcomes that people can feel across the country. We have one in clean energy. We are promised them for the other sectors in June. That is certainly not fast enough. We are seeing activity happening across Government to produce those jobs plans. In terms of where it has not yet delivered, it is in translating those plans, at the level of, “These are the sectors that we are backing in the future”, into tangible jobs outcomes for individuals. Quite a lot is riding on those jobs plans. They are in development. It is positive that we have a framework to say that these are the sectors to focus on, but, of course, they are not there yet.

These are the jobs plans for each of the IS8 sectors.

Exactly, yes, and for construction.

How are they going to do that for defence, if there is not a defence equipment plan?

We have raised that point. It is delayed. It needs to come. I had a meeting with the Financial Secretary just a week ago and raised exactly that point. I said, “We can’t delay this any more. I understand that there are many politics that are behind that, but, if you do not have a plan, it is quite tricky.”

Let me try to sum this up, then. You are saying that there has been welcome progress in getting the jobs plans moving forward. I do not want to put words in your mouth, but I am just trying to boil it down.

It is really welcome that we have a commitment that, for eight frontier sectors of the economy, we are going to publish a plan about how we deliver good-quality jobs across the country. It is a huge step forward from where we were a year ago to say, “We have an ambition to put workers at the centre of it. We have to co-ordinate a plan for skills. We have to bring together workers, employers and Government in order to do that.” That ambition is a big step forward, but we have to deliver on that ambition. We can see that it can be done. When you look at the clean energy jobs plan, again, there is lots to do in a lot of areas. For example, we have concluded a fair work charter in the offshore wind sector. You have also seen a record amount of investment going into offshore wind and a commitment going with that for really good-quality jobs. That is our ambition for the industrial strategy sector. It is plans that say, “We are getting investment into this sector. How do we use that to deliver good jobs?” That certainty is what the industrial strategy should be providing. As I say, we have seen it in clean energy. We will have a range of views about whether that is gone far enough. There is lots more to do in the North sea, certainly. The ambition is important. We now have to make it happen.

Bluntly, it does not sound like we yet have a grip on all the factors that are going to need co-ordinating in order to make real those jobs numbers. You mentioned UKRI. You have mentioned problems with energy costs. We have highlighted the fact that Government have not taken spending decisions on some pretty big sectors of the economy. Public finance institutions are moving forward, but I am not sure whether they are co-ordinated in enough. Would that be your summary: that we are not quite co-ordinating the levers effectively enough yet?

We are speaking for the council and I speak for the TUC. That is a fair summary, but it is fair to say, on the council’s behalf, that we have the opportunity to look at those factors. I am on the working group that is specifically looking at investment in skills. We have looked at co-ordinating institutions in more organised economies, as you have talked about. We have explicitly talked about the power of procurement to drive decisions and spending on skills. That advice is not yet published, but we have sent it round to Departments. The benefit of the council is being able to take that step back, look at those drivers and say to Government, “Where is the co-ordination?” Is that co-ordination yet happening across Government? No.

Greg Clark, what is your view on Mr Madders’ question?

My view is that, as colleagues have said, it is good that we have an industrial strategy. I was once responsible for one, but it got abolished, and that was not a good thing. Irrespective of the content, a strategy needs to endure. The fact that we have one is a big step forward. What I would say is that things do not stand still. You have heard that in both sessions. The context is life. In fact, one of your recommendations before the industrial strategy was published—I think it was the final one—was something about commitment, leadership and agility. In other words, a plan is not just a document. It is about responding to events. As Clare and Kate have said already, there is a theme that the pace needs to quicken. You were talking about industrial energy costs. This was a problem that you diagnosed in your report. We pushed very strongly on this. We thought the scheme that was introduced should have been stronger, more far-reaching and implemented rather earlier. Antonia made the comment earlier that it is coming in next year. The problem is now. The problem has been there for a year. Our advice, including when Ministers have appeared before the council, is to quicken the pace.

Leonie, do you want to add anything into the analysis?

I will not take up too much time, but I will build on what Greg said about pace. In the industrial strategy document itself, we saw lots of the right intentions and lots of the right direction of travel, but on the big programmes, such as regulatory reform, public procurement reform and planning reform, the diagnosis and the direction of travel seem right, but the pace of the interventions feeding down into real tangible improvements for business is where the council has made most of its interventions with Government.

Just to follow up, a couple of you have given that specific example of the energy interventions, where some sectors have not been included. Could you illuminate us on the conversation that happens? What is the Government’s response to that legitimate concern?

The sectors that are not covered are mainly a Government thing. Our mandate and remit is across the IS8 sectors. Certainly, from the engagement I have had with them, the ceramics topic came up when I was at Treasury last week, just as an example. They have to draw the line somewhere, and they understand that there is a problem. They are responsible for how to deal with those individuals. The Government take that directly. That is not particularly to do with us. If you think about the choice of the IS8 sectors, as you imagine, within the council we have all sorts of different views as to whether we think that is right or wrong, but that is the mandate that we have been given by the Government. It does represent where the majority of growth is coming from for the UK. In a time of limited resources and constraints, choices are important. When you make choices, there are always people who will not get covered. That is the thing that we have to wrestle with, but we are focused on the mandate that we have been given.

When you present these issues and the Government explain, as you say, where the line is drawn, do you feel like you are having any influence as to how those decisions are being taken?

Because the industrial strategy was focused on the eight sectors right from the get-go, that is where we focused our time, to be honest. I do not know whether you want to add anything to that, Greg.

We had some pretty robust exchanges with Ministers about the primacy of industrial energy prices in the run-up to the publication. It is a counterfactual and we do not see what went in there, but certainly they got a robust set of representations from the council based on consultation with business. You have the Secretary of State appearing before you. I hope they would say that this was one of the factors—I am sure they heard directly from businesses—that pushed them in the right direction. Collectively, we wish they had gone further.

Clare Barclay, you talked there about your mandate letter, but when you spoke to us before you were very keen to tell us about the fact that the Government intended to put you on a statutory footing. In fact, you went as far as to say that the statutory footing was one of the reasons you took the job. That has not happened yet. The Government have reiterated their commitment to a statutory footing, but there is no timetable for that. This Committee actually called for that legislation to be published alongside the strategy’s publication. Where are you at with that? Are you really able to do your job without that statutory footing? I am not really sure what the mandate letter actually gives you apart from a woolly outline.

Yes, it is a good question. I stand by what I said last time. When all the council members were asked to do the job, part of it was that the statutory footing would come. I am sure Greg will agree on the risks of it not being on the statutory footing. We have seen what happened previously. I personally continue to reiterate the importance of that. I welcomed the fact that the importance of it was referenced in your summary report, but we are still waiting for a date. We have not had anything that says they are not going to do it. It is probably more of a matter of time and priorities right now, which perhaps says something in itself.

Mr Clark, you are keen on having a statutory footing. What statutory powers do you need? How are you approaching this? Are you pressing Government on this? Are you asking for this? What are you doing?

I agree with what Clare has said. In terms of what we say to Government and the relations with Government, they meet with us from time to time and we make representations, so it is not that. Clare put it well when she said it is a statement of intent. If the industrial strategy is supposed to be significant and it is supposed to endure, it is a useful signal to put that in statutory form, as was the commitment in the manifesto and in establishing it.

Is there any pressure on it, though? Intent is wonderful. I intend to be a dilatory playboy one day, but I have absolutely no idea how I am going to get there. Intent is marvellous. It is wonderful. It is fantastic to have great intentions. You need this, do you not? You need this underpinning. If the Government are serious about this strategy—

They should do it. Again, to this point on pace, it is something that virtually everyone agrees with. There would not be any great resistance across the House of Commons to this being an amendment to some suitable piece of legislation. I imagine that this Committee might influence colleagues in the Chamber to do it. I do not see what the problem is. The Government have many problems, but this should not be one of them.

One of the difficulties that I have with this Government is that the inevitable never happens and the unexpected always does. Everyone is agreed that this should happen, yet somehow it is not happening. Is that a frustration for you?

Yes, it is, because that was part of the original intent. In what we are in control of, we are focusing on the job in hand. In all the letters that we send, we always continue to add that we are still waiting for this. We are still pushing and we still believe that it is really important. When I am speaking with many businesses, as I do, they really want it too. It is not just that the council wants it and you want it. It is very important for the long-term strategy, so that you are both thinking about the here and now, and building it for the long term. Leonie, I do not know whether you want to add anything.

No, you have covered most of it. There is one thing that I would say to your question about specific statutory powers. This was talked about in the industrial strategy document itself. The bit that feels missing operationally, which the legislation would fix, is the power to require data from Government on how it is being implemented and the impact. At the moment, we are getting very good collaboration from Government Departments on how we are building those M&E frameworks, but that is probably not a substitute for the stronger legislative powers that you might get with a statutory footing.

The lucky thing is that we have a King’s Speech almost upon us. You have not presumably had a smoke signal that this is in the King’s Speech.

No.

Have you had a signal that it is not in the King’s Speech?

Not exactly, no, but I have a feeling that it may not be in the King’s Speech.

That is quite a significant problem.

Yes.

If we take that or any of the other examples, we would look at what is being implemented. We would look at whether we believe it has gone far enough. We would go and meet with the individual Departments to understand what has happened, what is getting in the way and why it has not been implemented. We would, at times, then compile a letter on behalf of the council that would go certainly to the Secretary of State for DBT but also to other Departments as appropriate in order to continue to put pressure on it. That would be an example. We would do a number of meetings so we can bring the Departments together where execution is perhaps not happening in the way that we would have expected.

Yes. The metrics that we talked about earlier on are one of the things that we look at. We were discussing this just this week. If we think about net job creation, are we getting enough insight to put the right level of pressure in the system? That is now to be reviewed at the next meeting. We agreed that this week.

These are issues that we care about deeply at the TUC. The role of the council has been to look particularly at the cross-cutting issues, with energy costs being the most obvious one. When you look at the common factors across many if not all of those closures, the cost of energy has been there. That has been the reason why the council has been absolutely united in saying that this is the No. 1 strategic driver that we need to get Government to unite around. Something that we could look at more is supply chain mapping. We heard about the automotive supply chain just now. The TUC has concerns about the oil and gas supply chain. Whatever our future trajectory is for the North sea, we think that will be under pressure. Again, those jobs plans are a really important opportunity to do that. I know that it might sound like I am going on quite a lot about this. Everyone on the Industrial Strategy Council will have heard me go on at great length about jobs plans. It was a really important idea to say that there will be a workforce strategy, and that is where you can start mapping out the future skills needs, the pressures, what is going to affect jobs and where the transferable skills are, where we do need transferable skills. We know we have some. An advantage, as I said, of the existence of those eight industrial strategy sectors is that Skills England has produced a really clear estimate of the skills demands in each of those sectors. The next bit is to combine that with where these are comparable or transferable skills. The other bit that is missing, which again I have harped on about a lot, is the link with the infrastructure strategy. We have a multi-billion-pound investment programme across the UK requiring many of the same skills that we need in our industrial strategy sectors. That is a huge opportunity to run skills and training programmes, which can deliver those infrastructure needs in the short term and those long-term skills for the IS8 growth sectors. Again, that is a co-ordination issue, but, in the work we have been doing around skills as the Industrial Strategy Council, we are pushing through that. The jobs plans are another opportunity.

Kate does push us on jobs plans a lot. That is the value of having the unions on the council. When I met with all the unions together with Kate, it was the most important thing that they pushed for. If you do not have clarity on what the jobs plans are, it is really hard to think about what interventions you are going to do to avoid some of the issues that you have articulated.

Greg, you have been in this position before as a Secretary of State. You have a sense of what is needed to knock heads together across Westminster and Whitehall. Do you have the right level of grip and power to do that at the moment when things fall behind?

I regard the publication of the industrial strategy and its adoption as a staging point rather than a one-and-done exercise. I completely agree with what Kate has just said. If I were in Government, having commendably put in place the structure of the industrial strategy, I would pay particular attention to supply chains. It came up a bit in your session on automotive, but the west midlands MPs who are part of your Committee will know that the JLR cyber-attack, while obviously a problem for JLR itself, was also very worrying for the supply chain, which is perhaps not as well capitalised and cannot sustain a lack of payment for very long. If we are to build on these foundations, be prosperous in these areas, as we all want to happen, and meet our targets, we cannot just do it with OEMs. The supply chain needs to survive and prosper. I would say, as we do, to Ministers who come before us, “Don’t think you are finished. You have more work to do. You can build on these foundations, but there is more to do”.

The British state has not done that for about 80 years.

As you know—you have studied the history of this, as I have—there is sometimes the view on the part of central Government that you can do this with policies alone. There is a rather sort of Olympian approach. My view is that you need to roll up your sleeves and be active. A situation such as we had with JLR, while wholly unwelcome, sometimes does bring to light some vulnerabilities and you say, “Okay, we are going to act on that now.” I hope that is what my colleagues and successors in Government will now do.

No. We did not write it; the Government did.

What is the rough translation?

I know what it means and the Chair will know what it means, having been a former Treasury Minister. This is standard Whitehall boilerplate to try to keep nosy people from marking their homework. It may be the case that we note that but say what we think.

It is worth noting that the council is, of course, independent.

Yes, that is a degree of reassurance.

If you think about where growth, jobs and opportunity come—so much of the growth and opportunity is driven by London and the south-east—place is extremely important to the plan overall. As was outlined in the publication, this intersection of the IS8 cross-cutting themes and place, and how you get that Jenga puzzle right, is really important. We have worked very closely with the mayors as part of that to say, “If we are trying to intervene at the national level, let’s just make sure that we really understand that.” We have done that on a regional basis as well in terms of engagement with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. We are obviously doing this for the UK Government. That is where the mandate comes from. We are responsible to the UK Government and we take direction from them. The engagement has been good. We think about that quite deeply in terms of representation on the council. We recently added a new member, Keith Anderson from Scottish Energy, to beef up our Scottish engagement, as an example of that. Although Henrik Pedersen is not Welsh, his business, Associated British Ports, has a very strong connection to Wales. We try to think, “Do we have the regions covered? Are we engaging with the cities?” As part of one of the projects on market disruption, we are really trying to look at whether we are learning from cities that have done well. If we take the learnings from Manchester, where we have relatively positive growth, how do we replicate that?

Its growth is double the national average.

Yes, that is right. How do we take some of the learnings from there and apply those without being too Manchester-centric? We have also had some of that feedback from the mayors that we have engaged with in other areas: “Don’t make this all about Manchester.” I have learnt a ton as I have gone around learning about all the different places. It is very hard to meet the requirements of every single request that you get, but it does build a picture of what it takes to be successful and have meaningful impacts in local communities.

Very briefly, I am assuming your engagement with DBT is very good.

Yes.

In terms of other Departments, do you find that you are getting the right officials and the right level of seniority, and that they are responding positively? Is the whole of Government getting the message that your voice really matters?

I will comment, and then I would love to hear from the others because we are all engaging. As you would expect, we get very good engagement from DBT. We get very good engagement from Treasury. I have very regular meetings with Treasury. As it pertains to the particular workstream that we are working on, we would get good engagement there. There are some Departments that are more engaged and some that are less. We have work to do with defence.

Can I ask specifically what your engagement is like with DESNZ? We have heard throughout about the impact of energy costs.

I was about to say that defence, DESNZ and DFT are generally the Departments that come up on our list of Departments that need more engagement.

Yes. Certainly, from the work that I have done, I have had less interaction with DFT, but the engagement with defence has been slower. There is more opportunity there. Because of some of the policy recommendations that we have been intervening on, DESNZ is tricky. I do not know whether the others wanted to comment, from your personal experience, on what you have seen.

An advantage of having an independent council is that it gives you the ability to talk to the different Departments and sometimes communicate between the Departments more effectively than they can necessarily communicate with each other due to sitting slightly outside of it. My impression is that the triangle of communications between HMT, DBT and DESNZ on energy has significantly improved. That is my genuine impression in terms of how BICS was got to. The auto triangle is probably the next one that needs some improved communication.

I like your triangles. That is very good.

In addition to the problems that colleagues have mentioned, DSIT and UKRI in particular have really embraced the industrial strategy.

There is a lot of money there.

As you say, Chair, there is a lot of money behind that. Ian Chapman, who is the chief executive of UKRI, is reforming the organisation to be in support of the industrial strategy. That is notable. I would say generally that it is not cross-government enough. The industrial strategy, quite apart from being a plan for the long term, should be integrative and should pull the Government together. I do not hear enough references in speeches by Ministers in other Departments to the industrial strategy and seeing things through that lens. That is important because, as we all know, people listen. If they do not see the Government consistently doing that, they might be inclined to think, “Well, this is not as central as it might otherwise be.”

When you think back to your time doing the job, Greg Clark, are there some quite stubborn patterns of behaviour in Whitehall land? If you think about the Departments that need to do more to engage today, are they similar policy domains to when you were doing the job?

They are, curiously. I was driven mad by skills. It has moved Departments from time to time. There was something in skills that made it very resistant, especially to anything that involved devolution or local influence. I do not understand how, over generations, that should be the case. There have been changes. In my time, transport moved away from a very centralised approach, where Whitehall would literally get the map out and decide what schemes are going where. Through what we did in some of the early devolution deals, they got to see that, if you work with local authorities and regional authorities, you get more bang for your buck. They have improved, but it is not consistent. As you will know, Chair, the Treasury is always key to this. It can be a force for good or it can be a force for ill. I am given to understand that, a few years ago, the abolition of the industrial strategy was Treasury-inspired. The fact that the Chancellor, with the Business Secretary, jointly promoted and indeed convened the council was really important. That needs to continue.

Very quickly, DWP has some very ambitious plans in terms of NEET engagement. Has the council been able to engage with that?

The skills plan overall covers the work through DWP. It is part of the quad, from memory.

We have covered off skills and the jobs plans as part of your remit to advise the Government. The term “economic dynamism” has been suggested as something that you should have a look at. Perhaps that is about supporting the ability of markets to evolve, innovate and support high-growth businesses. I just wondered what your initial thoughts were. You might be publishing something in the coming weeks or months.

That is right.

I would like to ask another follow-up question around procurement, but starting with with economic dynamism, what do you take that to mean? How are you advising the Government to manifest that?

This connects a little bit to the work that I commented on in terms of trying to learn from where things have worked before. We are looking at it in defence and clean energy. We are looking at what drives markets to be dynamic with a view that says there would be net job creation and more growth. How do you take the intersection of that, so that you learn not just what the cross-cutting themes were but what worked and what did not work in a place? How do you then apply that in a way that other locations could learn from?

Are there any pieces of advice that you are starting to consider around the role of the Government? One of the areas where we know there is quite a big lever is around procurement. That can be used to drive some of that growth and help support smaller companies by giving them those revenue streams and the contracts that demonstrate that they are viable. Do you have your sights on any particular areas? Have you looked at that? We are quite concerned, on this Committee, about how we get the message across that we want to buy British. We want to be incentivising that and we want to see more of it, so that, hopefully, some of the industries and the companies that we raise the plights of are included in that in the future. Is that in your remit at all? How are you approaching that?

If you think of the current war situation and the crisis that is going on, we have been doing work on what some of the short-term interventions could be. When I was with the Financial Secretary two weeks ago, we were raising some examples. If you look at tackling public procurement at large, many have tried and not much has happened. We are trying to think about the narrower things that we could do. If you think of—I do not know—start-ups and scale-ups in the tech sector, for example, are there interventions that you could make that would require Government to procure through businesses such as those as opposed to a whole reform? I completely agree with you in terms of the requirements. There was positive feedback from Treasury that said, “We understand that we have to do that, but we want something that works. Therefore, we are looking for recommendations and advice”. I now have a follow-up letter to send on the back of that, just as an example.

That is useful.

Can I add one thing to that? I completely agree on procurement. The other thing is on regulation. Parts of the consultation—and your constituents, I am sure—point out that for a small business wanting to disrupt the status quo, dealing with the thicket of regulation and regulators can sometimes be forbidding. You made a recommendation in your report before the industrial strategy was published to expand the remit of this organisation called RIO, the Regulatory Innovation Office, which is an admirable thing. Patrick Vallance is the Minister and David Willetts chairs it. They are both experienced people. It is a good thing, but it is focused on, as it were, things within the DSIT domain. There is a case for that service to navigate regulators.

That is a good way to put it. Our concern was the consistent messaging we were getting about conflicting regulation from different parts of Whitehall.

Still thinking about economic dynamism, I just wanted to come back to the triangulation you were talking about before, between DESNZ, DBT and Treasury. The real concern that I continue to have—and I know every business in my constituency continues to have—is around energy costs, and the conflict between the policies that Secretary of State Miliband is pursuing and the outcomes for the industrial strategy. They seem to be directly opposed. How big an issue is this for the success of the industrial strategy? To your point about the triangulation, I was delighted to hear there are better conversations happening, but, of course, we need to get outcomes as well.

The energy costs in this country are a major problem. In a way, it was nice to listen to the leaders that were in the previous session, because it just articulated the problem. We continue to push. As a council, we obviously have some people who are energy experts, but interestingly, we have put a non‑expert on the interventions that we have done on energy, so you can go in and ask the noddy questions, push a little bit, and say, “Well, I don’t understand why it is that.” Obviously we did that with DESNZ. Sometimes, when there are Departments that are not agreeing, that is when we will say the things that need to be said that otherwise do not get said or do not get solved. Some of the letters that we have sent in and published where we are making recommendations really point to where we believe the problems are and what we would like the Government to look at, but at the end of the day we are advising; we are not making the interventions themselves.

What would be your biggest recommendation?

The energy system overall, when you compare ours with other countries’, would tell you that the energy prices in the UK are not going to get solved. Unfortunately, we have just had a war that just made it even worse. All of the intervention on BICS, which is a sticking plaster, has somehow been undone. We have to look at some form of scale reform. I realise it is difficult, because all of these things cost a lot of money. The example given by one of the previous speakers about what Germany has done is a big intervention to do. This was not universally agreed across the council, but another thing that was also mentioned on the previous one was the North sea. We did raise the North sea in terms of our own energy security.

I would not totally agree with the characterisation of all the policies of DESNZ being the cause of our current high gas and electricity prices, which rely on the linkage between international gas markets and electricity prices in the UK. These are not necessarily council recommendations, but the TUC has called for a targeted gas price cap. We have called for acceleration, particularly to deal with this particular situation caused by the crisis in Iran, and for that to apply to targeted sectors. That would benefit ceramics, obviously. We have called for faster action on de‑linking the electricity price from gas, for a bigger, expanded BICS, and for thinking through the job implications of the energy transition, which we know we are going through. There is a set of issues there. There is work going across Government to deliver those. The message of the council has consistently been that that work needs to be faster.

You cannot have different policies for different Departments. That is an appalling look. The industrial strategy should act as a clearing house to resolve these, so that, even if not everyone agrees with it, at least people know what the policy is going to be. The idea that people have to do Kremlinology between different Government Departments is not good for our competitiveness. It is very important that these debates are resolved, and then there is clarity.

We are well over time. I am very grateful to you for your patience. Let me just ask a final question. Clare, you are quite a reflective person. What are your reflections on the first 14 months in the job? How do you take those reflections into lessons for what you do next?

My reflections are mixed. Some of this has been said, but I feel the fact that we have a published industrial strategy is very positive. In the main, I feel positive about the support we get and the access we get to Government. I feel very good about the council quality and the people we have been able to attract, but I feel like there is still a lot to be done. The speed needs to move up. It needs to move more quickly. I love this country and I just feel like, with all the assets that we have, if we do not move quickly enough then some of them will be at risk. Now I am in the midst of it and I get to watch it, which just working for a big tech company I did not get to do, I feel more intervention is needed to get things moving. I know the council feels this too Any observations that you have and encouragement you can give to the Government on making it statutory would be important, because we then have a footing for the longer term. Although we are focusing sometimes on the near term, having an independent council is super important for the long-term success and economic output of the country and all the places around the UK.

It sounds like you are walking through treacle.

Sometimes it does feel a little like that; then sometimes you make some breakthroughs and you think, “Well, that actually worked.” Remember that I work in a fast‑growth tech company, so I have had to also learn to be a bit patient in the pace that the Government move at.

All of you talked positively about jobs plans, UKRI and the focus on place. You have then highlighted a bunch of particular priority issues, such as energy costs, procurement, defence spending, the need to join up with the infrastructure strategy, and conflicting regulation. We have not talked much about the public finance institutions, but I would put that on your list. You have talked about the need to get into supply chains a bit more as well. Is that the shortlist of things that you think, “Right, we need to crack this”? Have I missed anything?

The emphasis on start-ups and scale-ups is very important because of the level of growth that that could lead to. If it does not happen in the UK, it is going to happen somewhere else. That is another one that will be important.

I would add a couple of things. Having reached this staging post, I agree with everything Clare said about the pace. It is later than you think. You have to really press home the opportunity that you have to speak to the Government, to make the most of the potential that you have to make a difference, and not to let things drift. Beyond that, if you regard where we have got to as a staging post, I would look at some of the sectors that have not been identified as being the highest growth, but in which lots of people are employed, such as food and drink or hospitality. An improvement in productivity there can make a big difference to the prosperity of the country. It is not at the expense of these others, but, now we have reached this stage, I would look at that. In terms of place, learning the lessons from what has happened in Greater Manchester is very important. Reflecting on what has happened in other parts of the country, including the west midlands, is also important. My view is that, for the country to succeed at its maximum, you need to have every single part of the country firing on all cylinders. It is great to do that, but you need to look at some of the other places that have perhaps not been tearing ahead and at what can be done to improve conditions there.

The test of success with the industrial strategy is, “Do people around the country feel that their chances of getting a decent job with decent prospects have improved?” That is what we care about. That is what the council cares about, too. That is going to be the long-term success. We have moved forward, but, as everybody here will know, there is a long way to go before we get there.

From my perspective, the thing that we will be starting to add to the list to think about is how the industrial strategy evolves so that it is still fit for purpose in 10 years. It is the right set of policies now; there are still lots of problems that we need to fix and focus on now, but what are the things that we need to fix in 10 years? How do we start thinking about them now, so that we are in a good position to have pre‑solved them? That is the big question that is on my mind.

Thank you so much. I am sorry to have run over time, but that was an extremely useful discussion for us. We shall write forthwith to encourage a statutory basis for the Industrial Strategy Council before Parliament prorogues at some point tomorrow. For now, that concludes this panel and this session.