A former Conservative business secretary has criticised his successors for abandoning industrial strategy, including an “unnecessary act of vandalism” in abolishing a council of industry leaders.
Greg Clark said on Tuesday that the UK needed to be “more active and deliberate” in its approach to industry, in testimony to the Commons business and trade committee.
Clark was joined by two of his predecessors, Labour’s Peter Mandelson and the Liberal Democrats’ Vince Cable, in bemoaning the lack of a coherent industrial strategy since 2019.
The US, EU and Chinese governments have in recent years launched expensive efforts to subsidise and promote their domestic advanced industries, amid increasingly open geopolitical rivalry. All three former business secretaries said the UK was failing to keep up, putting British companies at a disadvantage by failing to match rivals’ industrial strategies and leaving them uncertain over the country’s long-term plans.
The criticism of the government by a former Tory business secretary highlights the tensions within the Conservative party about how far it should rely on market forces over government intervention.
Clark served as business secretary under the former prime minister Theresa May between 2016 and 2019. He said he tried to build upon work done by Mandelson and Cable to give businesses stability, whereas his successors “abolished the plans”, resulting in “intermittent industrial strategy over many years”.
He said: “Just at the time – partly driven by security reasons – that countries have looked to make sure that they can guarantee supplies and prosper in the world, we went through a period of abandoning industrial strategy, which I think was a mistake.”
Clark, who still serves as the Conservative MP for Tunbridge Wells, condemned the abolition of the industrial strategy council in 2021, when Kwasi Kwarteng was the business secretary.
The council, launched in 2018, had gathered business leaders for regular meetings to discuss government policy. It had included the former Bank of England chief economist Andy Haldane, the investor and GB News founder Paul Marshall, the former Virgin Money boss Jayne-Anne Gadhia, and the Marks & Spencer chair, Archie Norman.
Clark said: “It was an unnecessary act of vandalism to destroy a new institution that was doing good work.”
Mandelson, who served as business secretary between 2008 and 2010 under Gordon Brown, criticised the approach of the business minister, Kemi Badenoch, who has said she does not want the government to try “picking winners”. That phrase is closely associated with the former Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher.
“[Badenoch’s] living in a different rhetorical era, frankly,” said Mandelson. “She needs to join the 21st century and see what everyone else is doing in this new normal.”
Cable, who served as business minister under the coalition government from 2010 to 2015, said international competition from the likes of China would “only intensify”. However, he warned the UK against trying to match the US, a much larger economy. “There’s some danger in thinking you can cut and paste the [Joe] Biden model to the UK,” he said.
A government spokesperson said: “Those who say we don’t have a clear strategy in place are not paying attention. We’ve been working hand-in-glove with industry to ensure our plan provides the right support British businesses need.”
The spokesperson said the UK had a “historic year” for investment in 2023, including £29bn pledged at the Global Investment Summit, £4.5bn of government support for manufacturing, plus investments from Tata and Nissan.
