Let’s create a UK Silicon Valley, says Shapps

BUSINESS Secretary Grant Shapps set out plans yesterday to create a ‘Silicon Valley with a British edge’.

The aim will be to produce a global giant company with the stature of Google, Amazon or Apple in the UK.

Mr Shapps told an audience of UK business leaders at the World

Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos that he wanted to help innovative businesses not only to develop in Britain but also to stay and grow into world beaters.

He said there was no lack of innovation but that the UK ‘must do better’ in converting ‘start-ups to scale-ups’, adding: ‘I want to inspire scale-up

Britain.’ He hopes to launch the quest for growth with a ‘scale-up summit’ of tech and finance figures who have previously helped fledgling firms expand across the world.

Business leaders welcomed Mr Shapps’ aspirations, but one characterised his speech as ‘a good ambition but no specifics’.