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Now we have a full house: Labour’s spending review, the infrastructure plan and the long-awaited industrial strategy.
Anyone seeking to reconcile the bucketful of numbers, different timings of implementation and the exact sum of money involved will, to quote departing Institute of Fiscal Studies chief Paul Johnson, be baffled.
This is not to say that there is not good stuff in the industrial strategy.
The decision to relieve a bunch of manufacturing business, some 7,000 firms, of intrusive green levies represents a significant change of direction which should improve the competitiveness of the motor, aerospace and chemical industries.
But it does not do much help for retail and hospitality, which face not just escalating fuel costs but the consequences of the employers’ National Insurance increase and ramped-up business rates.
Whitehall is a whizz at coming up with an alphabet soup of new names such as the ‘British Industrial Competitiveness Scheme’ and a ‘Connections Accelerator Service’.
Hot air: Whitehall is a whizz at coming with an alphabet soup of new names such as the British Industrial Competitiveness Scheme and a Connections Accelerator Service
These will sit alongside the other good stuff already unveiled, such as Great British Energy and the National Wealth Fund. How this hangs together is confusing.
The focus on eight sectors where the UK excels – advanced manufacturing, clean energy, creative industries, defence, digital tech, financial services, life sciences, and professional and business services – clearly has merit.
Much of it is hot air. There is no recognition that great swathes of tech leave these shores daily.
Only yesterday, precision instrument maker Spectris fell into the hands of private equity plunderer Advent.
The creative industries are under threat from AI because Sir Keir Starmer favours American big tech over home-grown talent.
The decision to refuse assistance to AstraZeneca vaccine production in the UK encouraged our biggest pharma concern to invest overseas.
UK fintech creation Wise and Revolut plan New York listings. And the 2.5 per cent of GDP promised for defence spending is half the NATO target of 5 per cent.
Practical steps such as judicious use of the National Security & Investment Act, to end the madness of foreign and private equity bids, would be a good start to a refreshed approach.
Health boost
In the end, after a revolt from UK long investors, the ridiculous board of NHS and medical property landlord Assura opted for an effective merger with PHP.
That may require fewer goodies for executives and the jobs grief which comes with mergers. It must, however, be in the best interest of stakeholders.
Those at Assura who felt a cash deal with KKR was the better option were delusional. A search of the British Medical Journal archive provides clear guidance on the impact of private equity ownership in this space.
It results in extra cost to patients and payers, secondary effects on health outcomes and ‘mixed to harmful impacts on quality’.
A KKR deal would also have meant signing away the benefits of a 3 per cent rise in Labour’s investment in the NHS to grasping financiers.
All the indications are that many reforms to the NHS would focus on community and primary care, enhancing the value of companies investing in clinics and practices. KKR’s last offer was ‘final’, precluding a return with a higher bid.
One trusts KKR won’t be back for the whole caboodle in six months.
Cherry picking
Spectris is the latest advanced UK engineer to take the private equity shilling, choosing private equity giant Advent ahead of KKR.
The price of £4.4billion paid may look generous but not when one considers the discount to the New York stock market for the best of British engineering.
No one in the Government should be complacent.
It weakens the London markets. Advent’s purchase of Cobham in 2019 and the dismantling of an aviation pioneer was a disgrace. Its key flight refuelling technology was sold to a US rival.
The enormous value of Cobham’s innovative tech was demonstrated in the epic 18-hour flight of B2 stealth bombers to Iran and back at the weekend.
What happened to ‘securonomics’?
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