How the CBI can help build a global Britain
BUSINESSES ‘PLAY A VITAL ROLE IN FINDING SOLUTIONS TO CHALLENGING ISSUES’
I’M GOING to talk about how we can draw on the lessons of the last 12 months, and our work together – the CBI and its members, academia, business and government – to build a stronger, more sustainable and successful future across all parts of the UK and build a truly global Britain.
The CBI is constantly putting forward solutions right into the heart of government to deliver actions that make a real difference to our members. But we believe much more is needed.
That is why the CBI has called for a COBR for Recovery – to bring business and government together to find rapid, substantive and pragmatic solutions to these issues.
In August last year, I started calling on the government for the rollout of mass lateral flow testing, and from earlier this year onwards, these tests have been available free of charge to every business and to every citizen in the country. Survey after survey has shown that these tests are very effective.
Since January this year, the CBI and I have been calling out to the government to put as much focus and urgency on finding repurposed treatments to prevent hospitalisations and deaths from Covid.
Particularly since Sajid Javid has taken over as secretary of state for health, we have seen excellent progress. Today, one day after another, treatments are being announced.
I am confident that, with the combination of vaccines, testing and treatments, we can now hopefully avoid any further lockdowns as we learn to live with the virus.
And I am proud to say that the CBI and business also led the way internationally when there was the tragic Covid outbreak in India, my country of birth, back in March, April and May.
We mobilised our members to donate critical supplies from oxygen concentrators and oxygen cylinders to medicines and more.
The generosity and willingness to help was immediate and substantial, including working with the Prince of Wales’s charity the British Asian Trust, for which I am truly thankful.
Over the last two years, business has stepped up in the service of the nation to tackle some of the greatest challenges of our time. But the question now is, how do we get past those challenges? Unlock our potential? And become a truly global Britain?
It starts with being collaborative, something we must do not only regionally – as (CBI director-general) Tony Danker outlined – but also internationally. To build up the strength of our vital regional economic clusters. We already have a strong story to tell here. One of the best examples of the power of collaboration at home is the Cambridge cluster, built around a truly world-beating university that has more Nobel Prizes than any other.
It began as a tech cluster around Acorn Computers and Sinclair Research, and it is now home not just to leading tech companies like Arm, but also a thriving life sciences cluster.
So today when we talk with pride about the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, where are AstraZenica’s headquarters? Cambridge.
And just yesterday AstraZeneca opened its £1 billion new global research and development facility to be located in Cambridge too.
Another example – at COP26, I spoke on a panel about Hull with the leader of that city’s council, and the chancellor of the University of Hull; a UK managing partner of EY, the only Big Four firm in the city; and the chief executive of Reckitt, one of the world’s largest companies – whose origins are in Hull and who are now investing £200m in the region. A panel that yet again showed the power of business, government and universities working together to develop our vital regions.
Now we must build on this. That is why, speaking alongside the prime minister on Monday, Tony Danker announced the launch of the CBI Centre for Thriving Regions, to expand and replicate some of our most successful regional clusters.
And we have launched a universities and business taskforce to bring together and focus our business and university members on clusters, regional development, R&D and innovation. Collaboration can also, of course, be global. The last two years have been a defining moment for the UK’s role on the global stage, first with B7, then G7, which fed into our hosting of COP26.
Business is walking the walk too. At the beginning of this year in the middle of the pandemic, EY committed to going net zero in 2021 and they achieved this by October.
I had the privilege of chairing the CBI Heat Commission last year, which fed many key recommendations into the government’s new Heat Strategy.
And when it comes to the circular economy, I can think of no better example than my own business, manufacturing beer. The waste malt from the brewing process is used as cattle feed. The waste yeast from the fermentation process is used to make Marmite. We use as little water as possible, and the wastewater is treated to be used. And even carbon dioxide is captured and reused – I could go on.
We are also very conscious of the need to collaborate to protect biodiversity. The Dasgupta Review, led by Cambridge University’s Professor Partha Dasgupta, described nature as our most precious asset. It showed that one million animal and plant species are believed to be threatened with extinction. Working together, we can prevent this.
As the first ethnic-minority president of the CBI, I am proud to have launched Change the Race Ratio – which champions increasing ethnic-minority participation across all business.
As we know all too well, the pandemic has both highlighted and exacerbated long-standing inequalities – national and global – like never before.
The UK is the most amazing country, and we must use our strengths to not only collaborate at home and abroad, but also to compete on the global stage.
We are only one per cent of the world’s population and produce 14 per cent of the most highlycited research papers.
We are one per cent of the world’s population and one of the most entrepreneurial countries – the UK is home to the third-highest number of tech unicorns in the world.
But we cannot be complacent. Both the UK’s Global Investment Summit and COP26 highlighted that, as we emerge from the pandemic, there is a wall of investment waiting to be deployed to spark sustainable growth.
So now, our challenge is to create a business environment that will attract and unleash that investment. Because if we don’t, our competitors surely will. But there are big areas where we must improve to attract that vital investment.
When it comes to R&D innovation, we invest 1.7 per cent of GDP, which is low compared to Germany, whose R&D expenditure was the equivalent of 3.2 per cent of GDP in 2019, and the US where it was 3.1 per cent.
Imagine what we could achieve, if we invest another £20bn a year – it would power ahead our already powerful capabilities in this area.
Higher taxes threaten to stifle our recovery. What we need is to stop hiking taxes and focus on boosting investment. Because this is what will lead to growth, which will lead to more jobs, a higher taxtake and the debt being paid down.
In May, Tony Danker, who this month has completed a year in post, published our economic strategy for the next decade – Seize the Moment.
A blueprint for how we can secure £700bn worth of opportunities for the UK economy by 2030, it has six pillars – decarbonising our economy; putting innovation and future technology front and centre; reinvigorating our global trade; building thriving regions and nations; adapting to a changing workforce – more dynamic, skilled and inclusive than ever before; and building a healthier nation.
Building on this, business must also have access to the labour force it needs.
And, at the CBI, we have recommended that the government should revamp the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC), by giving it a similar status to the Low Pay Commission, widely acknowledged as one of the most successful public policy interventions in decades. We would add economists and businesses to the MAC’s membership, to be able to independently activate the shortage occupation list on a periodic basis.
But there’s another element too, and that’s boosting our global trade. I am proud to say the CBI has played a major role helping with new trade agreements, such as with the UK-Australia FTA.
This was followed by our FTA with New Zealand, and an enhanced trade partnership with India – with a target to double bilateral trade by 2030.
So, the opportunities are huge for global Britain. And there is one thing we must do to unlock the potential of a truly global Britain – we must harness the power of these competitive strengths on the international stage. We must back more UK firms of every size, sector and region to go global and export.
We already know exporting companies are more productive, more innovative, and – as we saw during the pandemic – more resilient against economic shocks. Now government must get the delivery of that strategy right, putting small business at the heart of the recovery and inspiring exports to build long-term resilience.
This is an edited excerpt of a speech by Lord Bilimoria at the annual CBI conference last Wednesday (24)