1 Introduction
Background to the Inquiry
1. The Department for Business, Innovation and
Skills has a wide remit which covers industry, trade, exports,
skills, higher and further education and apprenticeships. While
this may appear to be a diverse set of responsibilities there
is a common theme: that of pulling together the main policy drivers
which determine the country's output and drive the economy.
2. The stakes are high. The Government has emphasised
that in its opinion economic growth will be driven by the private
sector, not the public sector, and the Prime Minister has stated
the Government's ambition that the next decade would be "the
most dynamic and entrepreneurial in our history".[1]
It is clear that for this to materialise, the Department
for Business, Innovation and Skills will have to play a key role.
It is also important to be realistic about the limits of what
the BIS strategy alone can achieve.
3. This Report considers the approach which the
Department is taking to support industry and in what form it will
provide assistance. Our inquiry covers the role of the Department
in delivering a prosperous and sustainable economy, its role in
ensuring that the banks provide the necessary investment for business,
and a number of current and future programmes for assistance.
We also took the opportunity to look in more depth at three different
sectors to test how government policy supported their areas. While
it is too early in the Parliament to set out in detail our views
on the Department's achievements, we believed it important to
consider the Government's new approach at an early opportunity.
4. A significant part of the Department's work
will be to support and facilitate UK exports and this was included
in the initial call for evidence. However, we came to the conclusion
that the importance of trade and exports to the UK economy merited
an inquiry in its own right, this is currently underway and we
will report later in the year.
1 www.number10.gov.uk/news/speeches-and-transcripts/2011/01/prime-ministers-speech-on-economic-growth-58486 Back
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