Truss to build hi-tech villages for a new era of industry
PM hopeful vows to create modern ‘Bournvilles’ for workers in the tech sector and will expand freeports
‘Liz’s plan is the only one that will strengthen our international competitiveness’
LIZ TRUSS has unveiled plans to build 21st-century model villages to house the workers of “a new industrial revolution”, which would be unleashed by low-tax business zones.
The Tory leadership frontrunner said she would transform disused brownfield sites up and down the country into “full-fat freeports” to turbocharge investment in Britain.
She has pledged to get private enterprise growing faster than the public sector and return the UK’S economic performance to pre-brexit levels by the end of the decade.
Writing in The Daily Telegraph, the Foreign Secretary said she would reverse the country’s “managed decline” by “seizing our new-found freedoms outside the European Union”.
“My economic plan will help light the spark for a new industrial revolution and make our economy a lodestar for the rest of the world,” she said.
“It is designed to turn our economy into a high-growth, highly-productive powerhouse by cementing its status as the best place in the world to invest.
“At this time of great global challenges, we cannot take a business-asusual approach to the economy. We need to be bold and embrace true Conservative economics.”
Under her plan, companies would benefit from reduced tax levels, stripped back planning restrictions and targeted reductions in red tape at a network of new “investment zones”.
It would massively expand the Government’s freeports policy and remove the ability of Whitehall civil servants “to pick the winners and losers” of probusiness policies.
Ms Truss said the blueprint would “open the floodgates to new waves of investment” and encourage the construction of new model villages – like the settlements built by Victorian business owners during the first industrial revolution to house workers at their factories, such as Bournville and Saltaire.
Their modern equivalents would become home to the employees of “the industries of the future”, such as artificial intelligence, said Ms Truss. She said she would rip up bureaucracy to allow quicker building while working with local communities and councils to identify the best sites for redevelopment.
She also had a swipe at her leadership rival, Rishi Sunak, over his plan not to cut taxes on businesses or families until autumn next year at the earliest.
“I am the only candidate who will cut taxes, due to my firm belief in doing the right thing by rewarding people for their hard work,” she said.
Ms Truss plans to return annual growth to 2.5 per cent by 2030 – a rate last achieved in 2015, excluding last year when the economy was rebounding from the pandemic.
While chancellor, Mr Sunak was a driving force behind plans to open eight new freeports – low-tax economic zones – across England, plus one each in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
He has said they will “create jobs and prosperity around the country”, writing in The Telegraph: “My ambition is that the UK should become the richest country in Europe within the next 15 years.”
The first freeport opened in Teesside last November and is expected to create more than 18,000 jobs and provide a £3.2billion boost to the local economy over the next five years.
Further sites have been earmarked at the Thames estuary, Harwich, Liverpool, Hull, Southampton, East Midlands Airport and Plymouth. Plans for such zones in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have been held up because they have to be agreed with the devolved administrations.
Freeports are allowed under EU rules and several were opened under Margaret Thatcher’s premiership before being shut by David Cameron in 2012. However, they are heavily frowned upon by Brussels, which limits the scope of tax breaks that can be offered to companies.
Ms Truss’s plan to massively expand their use is being backed by Tory peer Lord Grimstone, a former business minister and chairman of Barclays Bank.
“Investment will be key to delivering economic growth: it drives jobs, innovation, and helps to level up the whole of the UK,” he said. “These investment zones will make it easier than ever before for investors to set up shop in the UK, creating vital new jobs and businesses.
“Liz’s plan is the only one that will strengthen our international competitiveness and help maintain our title as the most attractive investment destination in the world.”