Speeches by McDougall.

“We have Dr Rice on the Industrial Strategy Advisory Council. Part of the issue with this is that you have the eight sectors plus the foundational industries within the strategy. If you add to that 12 nations and regions, you start to have a council that is too big and unwieldy. The trick and what we try to do is to mak…”

“Yes. We are also, through the Business Growth Service, looking at the introduction of AI-powered advice as well. I was recently shown—I think the term is “beta version”—an early version of it. I threw at it, “I am a cake manufacturer seeking to export to the United States”, and I was really surprised with the accuracy …”

“That is something that we can take away and work together on. We can make sure the business advice is simple and accurate.”

“She would be better to answer that than me, but my experience with the Industrial Strategy Advisory Council is that these are people who are deeply connected in their sectors. They have deep experience of doing business. The Industrial Strategy Advisory Council also has a secretariat, which supports them in discrete pi…”

“We will always want more resource. As a Department, we will always make the case for that. The truth is, as the Department for Business and Trade, that we have to show the same level of efficiency and smart deployment of staff that the businesses that we work with would expect from themselves. What I would say—this run…”

“As I said earlier on, we are trying to improve the simplicity and accessibility of our business advice across the board. One of the things that I will take away from this conversation is to make sure that we are thinking about that in terms of internal trade as well as external trade. It is a perennial problem. As Mr H…”

“The short answer is yes. I think you are trying to do two things with the industrial strategy. First, you have to have a long-term set of commitments. You have to say to the world, “This is the basis on which we are doing business. Here is what we think we have to offer the world, and our competitive advantage”. That h…”

“I acknowledge that there is a huge appetite for export-related advice, and little wonder, because it is the single most impactful thing that you can do to grow your business and make it more resilient. I referenced this earlier on. When I ran a small business myself, I remember that feeling of having 20 different tabs …”

“Can I respond to that on two levels? Tina McKenzie, a fantastic Northern Irishwoman from the FSB, is chairing the regulatory deep-dive sprint that we have going on, looking into what we are missing on regulatory burdens as part of our overall plan to reduce the regulatory administrative burden by 25%. That is looking a…”

“ISAC members are out there consulting. That is part of what they do. When I am out and about in the nations and regions, meeting with particular sectors and clusters, members of ISAC are in the room with me a lot of the time as well. Again, these are people who have been chosen because they are at the top of their game…”

“Essentially, Chair, what he said. The key thing for Northern Ireland is that there is nothing but opportunity there. The overlap between the sectors we have identified within the industrial strategy and the sectors the Executive have identified within their economic plans as well shows that there is a consensus. We kno…”

“If I can give an example, I meet quarterly with the Economic Ministers from each of the devolved nations, and then meet bilaterally as well. One of the things around the industrial strategy that has worked with devolution is that, on the front of the industrial strategy, it has the UK government crest, but we are reall…”

“I view myself as a devolutionist, first and foremost. As Minister Patrick said, it is healthy for there to be a bit of challenge and mutual impatience with each other. There might have been a speech touching on an element of that earlier on today in your part of the world, and that is healthy.”

“I do not, but I can get you that information.”

“I was going to say that I am watching and listening to these developments as keenly as you, or probably slightly more keenly than you. I had a real sense from that speech earlier on—and I will be at risk of mixing metaphors here—of the telescope being turned round. Within the industrial strategy, there has always been …”

“There are official-level conversations all the time. One of the things about the industrial strategy is that it is, by its nature, expansive and touches on lots of different parts of the economic landscape. To touch on a few of them, my officials work very closely with Queen’s, for example, to try to make sure that we …”

“It is by continuing that sense of it being a collaborative project. Our officials are constantly in contact with them about that. I understand and agree with what you are saying about the danger of complexity if you are a business or an investor. This is where it is important to remember that our job as Government is t…”

“It can be an answer. It is one of the answers, certainly, to the productivity challenge that we have. I have the industrial strategy brief within my portfolio, but small and medium-sized enterprises are another particular brief. Kanishka has spoken about the wider industrial strategy element of this and making sure tha…”

“It is not just a case of being bold without being reckless. Mr Aldridge was raising questions about the ethical issues and the regulatory side of things that DSIT oversees. We have to recognise that there is increasingly widespread adoption of AI at the moment. We can be very bold with our policies around encouraging t…”

“I completely agree. It is an incredibly confusing landscape at the moment. It is confusing at any one moment, but it is also not a static landscape. If you can get to grips with it this week, there will be a new model in a couple of months’ time that will blow what you understood out the water very quickly. Skills Engl…”