Time to release our economic potential

THE UK Government will unveil its Industrial Strategy today, but in Wales people will want assurances that this is more than an exercise in rhetoric.

Four “grand challenges” have been identified that ministers argue the country must embrace if we are to reap social and economic awards.

These are the areas of “Artificial Intelligence and Big Data; clean growth; the future of mobility; and meeting the needs of an ageing society”.

Many people across Wales will think that this nation would love to make progress in these areas, but what is missing is not another strategy paper but cash and political will.

When it comes to mobility, Wales’ road and rail network suffers problems which choke prosperity. The lack of progress on improving key road arteries and the cancellation of electrification of the Great Western line from Cardiff to Swansea create the impression that world-class infrastructure is too often out of reach in Wales.

It would be deeply unfortunate if by the time driverless cars arrive we are still spending too much of our lives in gridlock around Newport. Similarly, it will be deeply disappointing if it is still painfully difficult to travel between west Wales, north Wales and the southern cities by public transport.

The Industrial Strategy flags up the importance of clean growth. We can only hope this is the precursor to an intelligent decision about the Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon.

While civil servants have been constructing their vision for sustainable industrial rejuvenation, supporters of the lagoon have been investing time and money in championing a project they believe could pave the way for a network of lagoons which would harness the power of the waves.

We have been waiting since January for the UK Government to respond to the enthusiastic Hendry Review which gave an emphatic thumbs-up to the proposals. Many people, not just in Swansea but around the world, hope that Whitehall will display a similar attitude.

A decent industrial strategy needs to acknowledge that too many parts of the UK fulfil nothing like their true economic potential.

A key measure of productivity – Gross Value Added (GVA) – shows that London had the highest per head in the UK in 2015 at £43,629, while Wales had the lowest at £18,002.

At a time of tightened public finances, there will be pressure to invest in sectors and parts of the country that already firing on all cylinders and rich in yet more growth potential – as demonstrated by the UK Government’s plan for up to a million new homes along the Cambridge-Milton Keynes-Oxford corridor. This is part of the world where great universities pump out graduates eager to work at the cutting edge of science and commerce.

But Wales is also home to excellence in aviation, defence, the creative industries, steel and biotech, and could do so very much more with the right infrastructure. The Western Mail newspaper is published by Media Wales a subsidiary company of Trinity Mirror PLC, which is a member of IPSO, the Independent Press Standards Organisation. The entire contents of The Western Mail are the copyright of Media Wales Ltd. It is an offence to copy any of its contents in any way without the company’s permission. If you require a licence to copy parts of it in any way or form, write to the Head of Finance at Six Park Street. The recycled paper content of UK newspapers in 2016 was 62.8%