Lord Kumar Bhattacharyya: Manufacturers given support
Mar 25 2010 By Lord Kumar Bhattacharyya
How encouraging for our entrepreneurial future that manufacturing and innovation were at the forefront of the Budget.
Help for small businesses, funds for low carbon and boosts for start-ups will mean jobs in the West Midlands.
Naturally, I was pleased at the pledge to strengthen the links between our universities and business to ensure ideas are harnessed for commercial success. The Chancellor also announced a £35 million university enterprise capital fund, to provide direct support for university innovation and spin-out firms.
In all this Warwick Manufacturing Group has led the way. If we are to grow our economy and offer our young people a better life then manufacturing and innovation must be at the heart of Government policy.
The university sector has been expanding for a decade – almost 400,000 more of our talented young people now go on to university than in 1997. Given this unprecedented rise in investment and the need to tighten public spending overall, it was no surprise that the Chancellor told universities they must make efficiency savings while focusing funds rigorously on teaching and research.
To help them do this, there will be an extra one-off pot of £270 million in 2010-11, through a University Modernisation Fund.
This will enable them to create 20,000 more university places, largely in science, technology, engineering and maths, starting in September this year.
The cynics will say efficiency savings will mean 20,000 places in so-called Mickey Mouse degrees.
In fact administration costs are much more likely to be the target.
Myself and others have been urging the Government to create an Innovation Bank, and the Chancellor has been listening.
He announced a new national investment corporation, to be called UK Finance For Growth, to streamline and improve the offer to SMEs.
The new body will oversee the Government’s £4 billion range of finance support for business.
And it will include a new Growth Capital Fund to provide fast-growing companies with the private capital they need. That should offer greater direction and support.
As the Chancellor spelled out, from advanced manufacturing to pharmaceuticals, from digital communications to creative arts – it is ideas that drive success.
We need to keep British talent in this country. Has he done enough? It is certainly a good start.
* Lord Kumar Bhattacharyya is the founder of Warwick Manufacturing Group.
