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Nigel Griffiths MPCity Growth Strategies Workshop |
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I'd like to start by saying how delighted I am to have the opportunity to be involved in what I believe to be a most exciting and imaginative initiative. I am only sorry that other engagements in Edinburgh prevent me from staying for the whole of the workshop. As you know, I took up my duties as Minister for Small Business and with responsibility for the Small Business Service, just over a month ago. If I've learned anything in the last few weeks it is that business, enterprise, entrepreneurship - call it what you will - is absolutely central to the economy as a whole and to the regeneration of our most deprived cities and towns. This is a message that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has repeated consistently over the last four years. And it is why he is so keen to support projects like City Growth Strategies that puts private investment, business development and the jobs that businesses create, right at the heart of the Government 's agenda. I am very pleased indeed that the Small Business Service, as part of its new and wider remit, is playing an important role in taking forward this, and other initiatives, to tackle economic and social exclusion. And in case you are wondering what this has to do with small firms - it has everything to do with them. Small business is the engine of the economy, employing more than half the workforce, creating goods, providing services, reshaping old ideas and old ways for the modern age, seizing new opportunities. The health of small businesses is the benchmark of our economic vitality. Small businesses in our towns and cities are very often the only providers of basic services from shops to laundrettes, from taxis to takeaways. They are the last bastions of enterprise; "very local" heroes indeed. One of the tendencies of the past, however well intentioned, it seems to me, has been to focus on disadvantage; to see rundown inner city areas and declining towns as problems; to see the people who live in these places as either passive, at the one extreme, or dangerous, at the other. But either way- in need of "someone" to sort out their problems for them. Of course there are problems. Even if we don't see them ourselves each day where we live or work they are only too evident in the press - crime, homelessness, drugs, alcohol abuse, decaying buildings, litter, graffiti - the list goes on. And of course there are people who feed off this misery and who trade on the despair and frustrations of others. What is so attractive about City Growth Strategies is that it concentrates on the positive. It looks for opportunity and for ways of translating that opportunity into reality. It dwells on the past only to see how things have become the way they are. It looks at the here and now to assess realistically what has already been achieved. It concentrates on the future to see how much potential, both human and economic, remains unexplored. In other words City Growth Strategies is about solutions and not just about problems. The Chancellor [as Paul Boateng has already mentioned] has been particularly keen for us to learn at first hand from the experiences of the United States in developing entrepreneurship in inner cities as part of urban renewal. I am delighted that we have been joined today by two distinguished colleagues from ICIC [Initiative for a Competitive Inner City] and I look forward shortly to hearing what they have brought to share with us. What they have to tell us about their experiences will, I am sure, be interesting, informative, stimulating and thought provoking. It is always great to hear success stories wherever they originate. But the challenge for us will be to test out how, to use a gardening analogy, we can transplant and grow our own City Growth Strategies to make our towns and cities bloom. The key ingredient of success will be partnership at the local level and the putting together of a team of committed players to drive the initiative forward. That team will need to make an honest and critical assessment of both success and failure. It will need to make linkages between the many initiatives, programmes, funding streams and so on that are there to benefit communities. It will need to embrace work that has already been done - on clusters, for example, where there is very good news about business cluster activity in disadvantaged areas. And it will want to build on new initiatives such as the Inner City 100 index of successful firms in disadvantaged areas. That's why, of course, that you are here today from our regions, cities and towns. Partnership is your stock in trade and I know you will use it well to work with ICIC, the SBS and the Treasury to explore what I believe is a very exciting opportunity. I wish you an interesting day and I look forward to hearing great things from City Growth Strategies UK style. |
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Other speeches by Nigel Griffiths MP
(the following are available from the archive) |
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