Venue: Tokyo, Japan

As always, I am glad to be back in Japan. I’ve always been an Asia-minded person but I am especially glad to have served as the UK Chair of the UK-Japan twenty first century group and to have championed Japanese commercial links with Europe as Trade Commissioner.

I am also pleased to say I still treasure the pen used to sign the post-war treaty between Britain and Japan: my grandfather was Britain’s signatory as Foreign Secretary at the time!

If we look beyond the current downturn, it’s certain that this edge of the Pacific will be the most important driver of change in the global economy and global politics. Not least because, like Europe and the US, you are having to define and manage relationships with a transforming China and a growing India.

But while change in this region is exciting, it needs to be seen in the context of Japan’s continuing relationship with its strongest economic partners, and Europe is chief amongst these.

It’s too easy and too common, in my view, for Europeans and Americans to misunderstand just how subtle and complex these regional relationships are and what they will mean for Asia’s future. We, too, need to adjust to the new influences on Japan’s future.

Today, I want to talk about two specific aspects of that future and what they mean for Japan and Britain: trade and the international economy and climate change.

It’s been an interesting few months for Japan-watchers like me in Britain and Europe. I want to congratulate Prime Minister Hatoyama on a campaign and a victory that is seen by many to mark a sea change in Japanese politics. I am officially flattered to hear that many of the reformers in Japan’s new government are looking to the UK system and Civil Service as a model for change in Japan. This is not the traditional kind of UK export – but it’s one we are pleased to supply, and will do all we can.

So, my first question is how we might capture some of that sense of change to reshape commercial ties between Britain, Europe and Japan.

In both the short and medium term, Japan and Britain face similar domestic challenges. We need to strengthen our banking sectors and invest in economic recovery. We need to convert carbon intensive industrial economies to low carbon in the space of a generation. As mature industrial democracies we all have ageing populations whose expectations of healthcare and support in old age will test our post-second war social settlements.

These are huge – even daunting – challenges. They are shared risks and somehow we have to resolve all of them as internationalists, capable of seeing both our national and collective global interests.

Copenhagen and climate change in December will be the first big test of this new political reality: a test which over the last few weeks we have sometimes seemed dangerously close to failing.

I have to say that in this area I think the new Government has made an impressive start. Its pledge to cut CO2 emissions by 25% from 1990 levels has already played an important part in bidding up ambition ahead of an eventual agreement at the Copenhagen summit. That is badly needed. It is holding firm even in the face of domestic opposition. I welcome this.

But beyond that: governing global finance and making the G20 a credible force; correcting over time the trade imbalances that have defined the global economy for the last decade; adapting to China’s new status and strength; managing the threat too often posed by North Korea. The list is not a short one.

The messages that Japan is sending – its high profile rejection of economic nationalism, its commitment to openness – could not be more important against the backdrop of global recession.

Preserving openness through the downturn

With the downturn, the question of global economic interdependence has become a question of national economic survival. Especially for a huge net exporter like Japan whose manufacturing sector has been hit extremely hard by the collapse in demand, just as many British exporters have.

So the internationalist stance of the Hatoyama government is welcome and timely and right. The joint commitment to a global recovery driven by a sustained and sustainable return to global growth and demand is something on which the UK and Japan agree closely.

Our challenge now is to continue to translate that agreement into joint advocacy for a Doha world trade deal, a G20 settlement on global financial governance and a global economy that comes out of this crisis as open as the one that went into it.

Britain rebounds

We also have to make sure that commercial ties between Japan and Britain emerge from the downturn without any permanent damage. I know that over the last year the Japanese media – often taking their cue from their British colleagues – have painted a negative picture of the prospects of the UK economy.

This is easily explained by the natural gloom of British journalists but, as a globalised economy, Britain has felt the effects of the downturn as much as most. Our large financial services sector was directly exposed to the banking crisis. But Britain’s open economy and flexible labour markets have proven strikingly resilient through this crisis, with high rates of re-employment for those unlucky enough to have lost their jobs. There are strong signs that the economy will have returned to growth by the first quarter of next year.

There have been a few important corporate testimonials to this over the last few months. Nissan and Toyota have renewed their commitment to the UK as a venue for low carbon automotive development. They and other major Japanese companies are responding not just to the very positive environment for doing business in the UK, but to the strength of our science base, our record in bioscience and manufacturing innovation, our skilled workforce, our central position in the massive European single market.

It’s a common caricature about the UK that our economy is based largely on the sharp suits in the City of London. But even the super-powered financial services sector of the last decade never eclipsed British manufacturing as a share of UK GDP.

If anything, the banking crisis has deepened the resolve of the British government to ensure that the UK remains one of the best – if not the best – place in Europe to do advanced manufacturing, especially in low carbon.

The low carbon sector in the UK will employ a million people by the middle of the next decade. It’s already worth more than a hundred billion pounds a year and has maintained positive growth rates even through the recession. The British government is investing strong support in low carbon technological innovation such as wave and wind power and the kinds of strategic skills these industries and their supply chains need.

Which country, for example, is already a pioneer in wave and tidal energy with government support? Britain. Which country is committed to having one of the world’s few heavy forging capacities for the nuclear supply chain outside of Japan? Britain. Where is the world’s biggest demonstrator programme for low carbon vehicles? Well, it’s in Britain, and its part-funded by the British government.

This has to be an area where there is scope for closer ties between the UK and Japan both in research and production. To be sure, it’s an agenda where business is often as concerned about competitiveness and costs as it is ready to focus on commercial opportunities. But that needs to change, and change quickly. Governments both here and in Britain need to insist on that. The scope for collaboration is immense. Britain and Japan are both industrial innovators who need to be confident of their capacity to benefit from even radical change. The low carbon economy isn’t a threat to recovery. It’s the key to sustainable recovery, where the earliest movers will be the biggest beneficiaries.

Open investment

There is no question that getting the best out of a low carbon partnership, or any kind of deep commercial ties, means an open investment relationship between Britain and Japan.

I made a bit of a stir here last year by strongly defending the value of foreign inward investment into Japan- even where it means foreign ownership. Yes, we should always ask tough questions of inward investment – as I said in the Wall Street Journal two weeks ago. But that’s not the same as questioning its potential value.

Japanese investment in the UK proves this. Nissan has been part of the industrial landscape of the North of England for 25 years. Honda and Toyota and hundreds of other Japanese firms like Komatsu, Panasonic, Sharp and Eisai are now an integral part of corporate Britain. These companies bring more than capital – over the last two decades they have raised standards for UK manufacturing and business as a whole. They are part of the reason why the UK remains the world’s sixth largest manufacturer.

My point is that what ultimately matters is not the colour of these companies’ passports, but their commitment to their local workforce. Their respect for the industrial heritage and local productive base.

There isn’t yet a British equivalent of Nissan or Toyota in Japan – as I was at pains to point out last year. British presence here is hardly weak – but it’s not what you’d expect in the world’s second largest economy. But the more Japan opens up, the more certain I am that a British aerospace leader; or ICT firm, or bank, or retailer, or pharmaceutical or healthcare investor could step into that role. I believe that we will both benefit when finally they do.

So, as I say, I welcome very strongly the Hatoyama government’s willingness to challenge some of the older negative assumptions about what is good for Japanese business and industry with respect to foreign influences.

And I welcome the recognition of the benefits of regulatory reform in Japan. Creating a wider and fairer field for government procurement is an example. This is the way to create public sector savings as well as a spur to innovation.

This change can have a very real effect in EU-Japan relations. If we’re serious about a credible Economic Integration Agreement between the EU and Japan then we’re going to have to tackle these tough issues.

For too long, the growth of our trade has been hampered by regulatory restrictions. We really need to lift our eyes and look beyond the obstacles remaining in the way, and commit to a new EU-Japan vision.

The fact is, it’s easy to cut a tariff. (Actually, as a former WTO negotiator with four years of Doha Round negotiations under my belt I can’t believe I just said that!). Let’s just say in principle it’s easy to cut a tariff.

It’s much tougher to identify and tackle the prejudices, the legal obstacles, the non-tariff barriers and the inter-Ministerial politics that can stand in the way of real regulatory reform. But this is what Japan needs to do. Addressing these will require real leadership and tough decisions to be made. To be totally frank, during my tenure as EU Trade Commissioner, I often felt the EU and Japan would find it too difficult to resolve these questions. I do worry that in the year and a half since I was last here we have not made a lot of material progress in improving conditions for foreign investors here. That’s the candid truth. So both sides have to try a whole lot harder and make it more of a priority. I was encouraged that Prime Minister Hatoyama recognised this when I saw him yesterday.

Conclusion: necessary internationalism

So I want to repeat the challenge I made when I visited Japan last year as EU Trade Commissioner. How can we not just maintain but strengthen an open trade and investment relationship? Then I was concerned about ensuring that the benefits of global economic integration were extended. Now I am concerned about preventing them going into reverse.

And that means tackling those areas where we have yet to see real change on the Japanese side. Recognising that just as Japan’s prosperity depends upon its trade with other countries, its competitiveness in a rapidly changing world depends on opening its markets even more to the benefits of foreign trade and investment. The new Government has made an impressive start in setting a new, internationally-minded, tone to the political debate. It has identified the values, interests and goals that Japan shares with its allies. Let’s work harder to give them real expression. We need to do this if the relationship is to grow and prosper.

The worst thing that we could do would be to take each other for granted. That’s no way to preserve a good marriage. I have confidence that the new Japanese Government will not allow that to happen.

Kevin Brennan joins a huge range of key informal adult learning stakeholders today for the launch of The Learning Revolution Festival, a month-long celebration of informal adult learning and the benefits it brings for individuals, families, businesses and communities.

Throughout The Learning Revolution Festival hundreds of events, such as taster sessions, workshops, demonstrations, performances, competitions and classes, will take place across England giving current learners the chance to celebrate what they enjoy and others the opportunity to try something completely new. By highlighting the richness and sheer diversity of what’s available, The Learning Revolution Festival will encourage people of all ages and backgrounds to get involved in learning.

Find more videos like this on The Learning Revolution

Today’s launch Expo will give stakeholders the opportunity to network and form partnerships to help improve and promote their services to their local communities and the wider public. Learning activities will be taking place throughout the day and all attendees will be encouraged to get involved and learn something new. Kevin Brennan will be making a formal address to those attending.

Kevin Brennan, Minister for Further Education, Apprenticeships, Skills and Consumer Affairs, said:

“Informal learning brings proven mental, physical and social benefits and the Learning Revolution Festival is all about highlighting these benefits. Through our commitments in the Learning Revolution White Paper, the Government is doing its best to encourage organisations, groups and individuals to get involved and get learning.

“Today’s Expo is the perfect opportunity for partners to share ideas and combine resources, ensuring adults across the country can benefit from even more learning opportunities.”

The Festival is part of The Learning Revolution movement kickstarted by the Government White Paper published in March 2009. The Government already spends £210 million each year on informal adult learning and the White Paper committed an additional £30million for 2009-10 to strengthen the infrastructure for informal learning across England. Of this, the £20m Transformation Fund recently awarded grants to 231 informal learning initiatives and a new £3m support package for community learning champions will be launched 8th October.

People wanting to join the Festival and try something new should visit www.direct.gov.uk/learningrevolution where they can find details of hundreds of events taking place up and down the country.

Find more videos like this on The Learning Revolution

Organisations wishing to support The Learning Revolution Festival and access materials available should visit thelearningrevolution.ning.com.

Watch Lord Mandelson’s video on the Government’s Learning Revolution initiative.

To save business time and money Government departments now issue all their changes to business regulations on two dates per year – 6 April and 1 October. This is part of the Government’s commitment to promote better regulation, regulating only where necessary, doing so in a proportionate and targeted way, and reducing bureaucracy wherever possible.

From today, new businesses will be able to save valuable time and money with simpler model articles, making it easier to start up and run companies. Other measures will help shareholders and investors by encouraging disclosure of strategic, forward looking information through enhanced business review [not new – commenced 1 October 2007].

Key provisions of the Companies Act 2006 include:

• Creating separate and simpler model Articles of Association for small companies, reflecting how they operate
• Enabling greater use of electronic communications with shareholders therefore avoiding unnecessary cost and time consuming administratio
• Making it an offence to carry on business in the UK under a name that gives so misleading an indication of the nature of the activities of the business as to be likely to cause harm to the public.

Business Minister Ian Lucas said:

“We are working hard to create the best environment for businesses to thrive and it is paying off, with the UK recognised by the World Bank as the best place in Europe to do business.

“Common Commencement Dates help companies to plan ahead, saving them time and money. The changes under the Companies Act will help 2.5 million British companies and deliver benefits to business of around £300M a year.”

The changes have been widely welcomed by businesses because many of the measures have been introduced to reflect how companies already operate, minimising the burden on business to adapt to new regulation.

The following regulations are also coming into force:

Department for Business – National Minimum Wage and Tipping

Department for Transport – Local Transport Act

Credit Rating Agencies

Notes:

1. The Better Regulation Executive is taking forward the Government’s better regulation agenda. 

2. Examples of how individuals and businesses are benefiting from changes to regulation can be found on http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20091007144321/http://www.betterregulation.gov.uk. The site also invites suggestions for what else can be done to reduce red tape.

The automotive sector supports R&D, technological innovation and skills and a manufacturing supply chain that are a mainstay of the wider manufacturing sector in the UK. Industry figures have reflected the positive impacts of the scheme both within and beyond the automotive sector, with manufacturing benefitting and the whole supply chain, from plastics and steel, to individual component manufacturers receiving a boost.

So far 227,750 orders have been placed through the scheme. The increased funding enables the scheme to fund a further 100,000 vehicles, bringing total budget to £400 million and covering up to 400,000 vehicles in total. The extension continues as a Government and manufacturer partnership, with matched funding providing the £2,000 discount for each scrappage order.

Alongside the increased funding the Government will work with manufacturers to extend the benefits to van owners with vehicles over 8 years old rather than the current 10 year requirement. Car owners will also get a boost, with the age qualification changed by 6 months to extend the benefits to cars registered on or before 29 Feb 2000 (V registration). The scheme will come to an end in February 2010 or when the funding runs out, which ever is sooner.

Business Secretary Lord Mandelson said:

“The sector has been strongly affected by the recession, but the scrappage scheme has delivered a boost to manufacturers and the supply chain. We have listened to the concerns of manufacturers and are increasing the funding of the scheme to £400m.

“But we must make sure that the help we do offer is targeted, limited and proportionate. This is not a blank cheque to the auto manufacturers but recognition that there is still a short term challenge to boost demand and confidence in the sector.”

Notes

Because of additional funding by the Government and manufacturers, the Scheme will now cover up to 400,000 transactions. It will still come to an end on 28th February 2010 or when the funding runs out, whichever is the sooner

To ensure all 10 year old cars will qualify for the scheme, the date by which vehicles must have been registered in the UK to qualify for the scheme will be changed to 28 February 2000 (V registration) except in the case of vans where the date will be changed to 28 February 2002 (Y registration or earlier, or new style number plates where the 3rd and 4th digits of the registration number are 51)

Government will work with manufacturers to implement these changes, and these will come into effect as soon as possible.

The Government scrappage subsidy is matched by equal funding from manufacturers.

The scrappage scheme figures are updated on a weekly basis on the BIS website, where you can also find more information about the changes to the scheme: http://www.berr.gov.uk/whatwedo/sectors/automotive/scrappage/page51068.html

The £2,000 grant is made up of £1,000 from government with matched funding from vehicle manufacturers.

How to apply

The dealers will do all the paperwork for motorists participating in the scheme and arrange for the old vehicle to be scrapped. The dealer will check that the vehicle being traded in and the new one being bought qualify under the scheme:-

OLD VEHICLE

• Passenger car or small van not exceeding 3.5 tonnes
• Registered in United Kingdom on or before 31 August 1999 [NB - expected to change shortly in line with today’s announcement]
• Currently registered with DVLA or DVA to the registered keeper making the application
• Vehicle has been registered to the customer continuously for 12 calendar months before the order date of the new vehicle
• Vehicle has a UK address on the registration certificate (V5C)
• Vehicle has a current MOT test certificate before the date of order for the new vehicle, or one that has expired no more than 14 days before the order for a new vehicle was placed
• Vehicle is taxed, or has a tax disc that has expired within 14 days of the order and insured

NEW VEHICLE

• Passenger car or small van up to 3.5 tonnes
• First registered in the UK on or after the date the scrappage scheme is launched and declared new at first registration in the UK with no former keepers
• UK specification vehicle (can include left-hand drive vehicles that meet UK specifications)
• Registered to the same registered keeper as the registered keeper of the eligible vehicle to be scrapped

Visiting the BRIT School in Croydon, Business Secretary Lord Mandelson said it was vital for jobs and growth that Britain’s world-renowned creative industries are given the chance to flourish. He said the Government welcomes the current debate on digital piracy, including views put forward by the music and film industries, consumer groups, unions, ISPs and musicians themselves.

Lord Mandelson said:

“Downloading somebody’s work without paying for it – whether it be music, film or computer games – is not a victimless act. It poses a genuine threat to our creative industries and to the livelihoods of talented, hard-working people striving to get a foothold in them. It’s essential that the voice of young artists is also heard.

“In the end this problem will be solved not simply by new laws but by new approaches to doing business. We believe that temporary account suspension as a last resort, in the most serious cases, is worth considering to allow these new business models to develop.”

He added that the Government welcomed new commercial offers like Spotify or Vodafone’s DRM-free music deal that give consumers a range of legal choices.

Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw said:

“Britain’s got talent – and the BRIT School is a shining example of that. But if we want the next generation of musicians, filmmakers, developers or designers to succeed, we need to address urgently this threat to the sustainability of our creative industries. Unlawful file sharing costs businesses that invest in new talent millions each year.

“Tomorrow’s stars are born digital. We need the industry to match their ingenuity and devise new business models that work in the digital age. It is right that artists are rewarded for the time, energy and creativity they invest in producing something the public wants. And if we are to retain our creative edge in the long term and enjoy the cultural benefits that brings, we need innovation to allow that talent to shine.”

Lord Mandelson and Mr Bradshaw praised the work of the BRIT School providing young people with the grounding and skills they will need to look for careers in the creative industries.

Video

Press notice
Read the full press notice here.

Images
To view images of the visit to BRIT School (and for online journalists to download and re-use), see the Flickr album here.

Blog
For more on the development of our policies on Digital Britain, including a discussion of the government’s approach to the file-sharing issue, visit the Digital Britain Forum blog.

Consultation
To have your say on proposed filesharing legislation, see the Consulation on Legislation to Address Illicit P2P File-Sharing. It closes on 29 September 2009.

Speech
Minister for Digital Britain, Stephen Timms, spoke about the importance of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) earlier.  Read the full speech here.

Baroness Vadera

The Prime Minister has today announced that he has appointed Baroness Shriti Vadera as adviser to next chair of G20, the Republic of Korea, following a request from President Lee.

Her new role, which she will take up from mid October 2009, will be to help manage the transition from the UK to the South Korean Presidency and reflects the growing importance of the G20 group and the UK’s engagement with it.

Baroness Vadera is currently the Minister for Economic Competitiveness, Small Business and Enterprise.

Lord Davies of Abersoch, the Minister for Trade Investment and Business, will assume her BIS ministerial responsibilities. She will not be replaced in her role as joint Cabinet Office minister.

The Prime Minister said:

“The G20 is an increasingly important global group. The previous year has shown the vital importance of working together to deliver jobs, growth, and stability. In her new role Shriti will significantly strengthen the UK’s engagement with the G20, including working with the Republic of Korea as the next chair. I thank her for her dedicated work as a Government minister.”

Business Secretary Lord Mandelson said:

“Shriti has made a tremendous contribution to the Department for Business. She has worked tirelessly to ensure businesses, especially small businesses, are supported through the Recession and emerge stronger at the other side.

Shriti has real passion for the G20 and has done excellent work already promoting international action to tackle the financial crisis. So this is a logical move for her and us.

And I know Mervyn Davies is looking forward to taking on her departmental responsibilities. He will do a great job for small business.”

Notes

1. Shriti Vadera will take up her new role from mid October 2009, for which she will not be paid a ministerial salary.

2. Shriti joined the Department for Business as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Competitiveness in January 2008. In October she was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Economic Competitiveness, Small Business and Enterprise, jointly with the Cabinet Office and Department for Business Innovation and Skills.

Prior to that she spent 8 years on the Council of Economic Advisers, HM Treasury and was advisor to Gordon Brown when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer.

She was responsible for advising on business and city issues, productivity, enterprise, PPPs, public enterprises and amongst other things, was responsible for the creation of the Shareholder Executive, the Better Regulation Executive and initiating the Hampton, Barker, Eddington, Higgs, Myners and other Reviews.

She served as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for DfID from June 2007 to January 2008. She has 14 years’ experience as an investment banker, advising on banking, capital markets, project finance and corporate finance internationally.

Introduction

It is of course a serious time for Britain. Over the last two years, we’ve been through some of the toughest retail trading conditions for decades and lost some familiar names from the British high street.

The Government has backed you up in some important ways, and, when we look back our policies will have been seen to have helped make the recession shorter and shallower. The VAT cut has helped support demand and I know you’ve made representations to the Government about the timing of when the cut should end.

Through the Enterprise Finance Guarantee, just under £120 million has been lent to retail companies who would otherwise not have received bank funding.

As the CBI has just argued, at a time when our economic prospects are improving, this is not the moment to pull the Government’s support away from the economy. Given the lingering impact of the financial crisis and the continuing tight credit conditions the CBI is right to say that the fiscal and monetary stimulus are both still needed. They are in good company: across the G20 economies there is unanimity that early exit from the stimulus measures would put the recovery at risk. Our big immediate challenge is locking in the recovery, not wrecking it.

Luke is of course right that we need a long term policy for rebalancing the public finances. But growth is the best counter to recession and the best antidote to debt. And that means maintaining the present course: underpinning demand in the economy, sorting out the banks, stopping unemployment becoming long term joblessness, especially among the young, and coordinating these policies internationally and in the EU. The Government needs to support investment in our future skills, technologies and growth markets and sectors from where many future jobs will come.

Reducing the financial deficit is not a question of if, but when and how. We all know that. But an approach to rebalancing the public finances that is too early, too hasty, or too indiscriminate would undermine the very growth on which locking in the recovery depends. It would send unemployment and its costs soaring, thus causing the deficit to spiral, rather than cut in half in four years, as we have announced our intention to do. Professor David Blanchflower, the recent member of the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee, has warned of the acute dangers to employment that would arise if spending – public spending – cuts are made too early and if the fiscal stimulus is withdrawn straight away. Frankly, those who advocate this course are either economically illiterate, or irresponsible, or both.

We all recognise that the next few years are going to bring real constraints. I have no more time than you do for airy-fairy wish-list politics. But neither do I have any time for shallow analysis or short term headline grabbing.

And as a frontline sector that depends on demand and growth more than most – retail is right to challenge government to get this right. I accept that challenge. Tonight I want to recognise the role of this critical sector and lay down some challenges of my own to you, on low carbon and skills.

The Retail Revolution:

I got pretty used to hearing from the BRC when I was EU Trade Commissioner. Because this is an industry that is built on trade, and global trade in particular. Globalisation has transformed your supply chains and the expectations of your customers.

The best British retailers have seized on that change as a driver for diversity and growth. They’ve built strong national brands, then exported those brands around the world. You now employ one in ten British workers.

I know that you spend a lot of time and money working out what your customers want and think. And it’s worth looking at the next decade through their eyes for a minute.

They’re going to put a greater emphasis on paying down personal debt and thus value for money. Their whole idea of personal service and convenience is changing driven in part, but not totally, by the internet. They’re bringing all kinds of other factors into their choices as customers: the environment, ethical sourcing and animal rights standards.

And in part because retail is often being done in ways other than over an old-fashioned counter, they’ll want high standards of service and client care. It does seem to me that for all the scale of big retail in the UK, the customer remains firmly in the driving seat. And that’s exactly as it should be.

Our basic challenge in government is to make sure that you have the flexibility to respond to that demand, and to keep on innovating. And yes Luke, I agree with you not to place an intolerable level of regulation on you that is not sufficiently tested and justified.

A big part of that is just working to keep markets open and competitive, so you can source goods and trade effectively; and on establishing a modern, digital infrastructure you and your customers rely on. I feel very passionate about that not only in my Department, but in the Government as a whole.

It also means a consumer law framework that is modern and transparent, as we argued in our recent Consumer White Paper. We’re working with you on making sure that you don’t have to be a lawyer to understand your consumer rights in this country.

And while I obviously hear Luke’s messages on the retail environment, it is worth remembering that the UK has probably the most open and competitive High Street in Europe, backed up by a flexible labour market and some of the lowest business tax rates in Europe too and that’s how we want these conditions to remain.

Growth through a low carbon future:

Of these customer expectations the low carbon transition is perhaps the most far reaching. Because it is more than just a customer preference – it’s a social imperative. We don’t just need to tap into green consumerism, we need to create and encourage and nurture it. Retailers have a major part to play both as adopters and advocates of low carbon processes and behaviours.

Initiatives like the BRC’s Better Retailing Climate are making a difference, and I welcome that. I want to harness that energy and experience as much as we can.

The 1 in 4 of our working population, who have retail experience add up to a huge store of low-carbon literacy that we can inject into our wider economy.

That’s why we’re going to work on a Low Carbon Action Plan for Retail. And I’ve tasked BIS officials to work quickly with you and our colleagues at DEFRA to develop this plan.

Investing in our people

Finally, I want to say a word about your other key constituency. Your workforce. It’s not really an exaggeration to say that the prosperity of the UK is built on productivity. With margins like yours, that is hardly news to any of you.

But we need to look at these issues from more than just the bottom line. Productivity is ultimately about skills.
Skilled workers are more motivated, upwardly mobile and loyal. And with almost 3 million employees, the UK retail sector is one of the most successful in creating employment opportunities for the long-term unemployed, older people and flexible workers. I commend the way you have tapped into these forces in our workforce.

It’s got a long, impressive history of people working their way from shop floor to boardroom, from market stall to multinational. Probably no other industry in the UK can match that record.

Over the last few years, we’ve had bankers without banking qualifications. But I find it hard to imagine a retail CEO who didn’t know their way round a shop floor.

So I want to lay down my second challenge of the night: that you work with us to enable more people to progress through a career in your industry. And you ensure that, across this sector, a job in retail is a ladder up.

I know there’s already a lot of good stuff happening such as through apprenticeships and the new retail qualifications framework.

But we need more businesses, big and small ones, to get involved – to recognise that there are no diminishing returns on investment in staff skills.

And in the coming months, Government will be launching our new Skills Strategy, setting out how we aim to meet the skills needs of this and other sectors in the future. The skills that underpin the retail sector are of course part of that.

Conclusion:

Retail is on the frontline of this recession. Thousands of businesses are working hard to respond and survive, drawing on the innovation and flexibility that’s helped them to succeed in a tough, changing retail environment.

Together, we’ve got to build on that strength for future success – increasing skills, developing a lead in low carbon and maintaining a business environment that supports the creation of wealth and jobs. And I look forward to realising this sustainable future with you in the months and years to come.

Thank you.

Vulnerable workers will be able to seek advice about their workplace rights and report abuses of those rights through a new helpline launched by Business Minister Pat McFadden today.

The new Pay and Work Rights helpline is part of a wider campaign to raise awareness of workplace rights enforced by Government. It provides a unified point of contact for both employers and workers.

The helpline telephone number is 0800 917 2368.

It has been developed in cooperation with employers, trade unions and the different enforcement agencies across Government.

The employment rights in question are:

• National Minimum Wage
• Agricultural Minimum Wage
• Working Time (48 hour average working week)
• Employment agency standards
• Gangmaster licensing

Previously calls on each of these rights were taken by five separate Government bodies. Workers can now report abuses of these rights to one point of contact that can address multiple complaints.

The launch of the single helpline comes as a new poll showed that nearly half of people (48 per cent) wrongly thought employment agencies can charge workers a fee for finding them a job.

Business Minister, Pat McFadden said:

“This Government has done a lot to improve rights at work but it’s also essential to make sure these rights are properly enforced. A simple system for reporting abuses and giving advice and information to employers and workers is a critical part of that.

“By consolidating the current complex system of different helplines for different issues into one single number we are making it easier for workers to report abuses and for Government to respond. We want to transfer the burden of navigating the system from the worker to the Government. This is an important step and we are determined that the recession does not become an excuse to deny people their basic rights at work”.

The helpline is based in Manchester and staffed by specialist, trained advisors able to offer help and advice. Information is then passed to the relevant enforcement body to take further action where appropriate.

Video
A video has been produced to explain how the line will work and allows the specialist, trained advisors that staff the line explain how they can help:

Photos
The below photos are available for download and reuse from the BIS Flickr site.

Mr Lucas made the comments as he published the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills’ (BIS) response to the Business & Enterprise Select Committee’s report, The Automotive Industry in the UK.

Government has already taken substantial action to support the UK car industry and last week made the first loan from the Automotive Assistance Programme (AAP). Tata Motors European Technical Centre plc (TMETC) has been given a £10 million loan to support the production of electric vehicles in Coventry.

Business Minister Ian Lucas said:

“These are tough times for the car industry, and because it is one of the key sectors of our economy we must support it now and in the future.

“We have acted to support it in the short term through £300 million support through the scrappage scheme, helping over 200,000 people to order a car now instead of waiting, and I have heard direct from the industry that it has benefitted enormously from the scheme.

“Our assistance does not stop there. It’s not just about what we can do in the short term. We must invest in the future. That’s why, in addition to AAP, we are helping the car industry to take advantage of the opportunities that moving to low carbon represents. We have already set aside £250 million for consumer incentives and infrastructure, and we will continue to support low carbon car development.”

Ministers continue to consider a number of other bids for assistance from the programme’s budget to help the industry meet consumer demand, protect it from the downturn and help it become a world leader in low carbon cars. There are already ongoing negotiations with companies on more than £1 billion of applications with a total project  value of some £2 billion. The Government is also considering applications to the scheme that are below the £5 million project limit in order to extend support to smaller companies in the supply chain.

Notes

1. View a copy of the Government’s response to the BERR Select Committee’s report The Automotive Industry in the UK.
2. The Automotive Assistance Programme (AAP) is the Government’s long-term reinvestment of the automotive industry through a support package. It provides loan guarantees (or, exceptionally, loans) to the UK automotive sector.
3. The AAP aims to unlock a total bank and EIB support package of up to £2.3 billion to provide support for automotive companies as they invest to create or sustain jobs, develop cutting-edge technology, bring special value to the UK, maintain R&D in UK vehicle manufacturing and support the development of green technologies.
4. To be eligible, vehicle manufacturers and/or suppliers need be viable as at 1 July 2008, with turnovers in excess of £25 million, who wish to undertake a project valued at £5 million or more. The projects could not otherwise be undertaken without government support.
5. The scheme was announced by the Secretary of State on 27 January 2009, and received state aid clearance on 27 February.
6. The Business & Enterprise Select Committee launched their inquiry into AAP on 25 March, and published their recommendations on 17 July.

The event, titled “Science reporting: is it good for you?”, was chaired by Radio 5 Live presenter Simon Mayo.  Scientists, science communicators and journalists also took part in the debate, both live at the event and online via Twitter.

Free tickets to the event sold out in just 90 minutes after they were announced on Twitter. If you missed the debate you can watch it on demand at the Times Higher Education website here.

To follow the discussion on Twitter, use the hashtag  #scidebate

For photos of the event, visit the BIS Flickr album. Images are available for re-use by media and bloggers under the creative commons license.

A total of £2.46 million will be made available to help unions improve their ability to meet the needs of hard-to-reach groups of vulnerable workers. It will be matched with at least an equivalent union contribution.

The money will be distributed under Round Three of the Union Modernisation Fund which provides financial assistance to trade unions and their federations for innovative projects with the potential to transform their effectiveness. Bids are assessed by an independent Supervisory Board comprising individuals from union, academic and industry backgrounds.

Speaking at the TUC Annual Congress, Minister for Employment Relations, Lord Young said:

”The latest round of the UMF focuses on protecting some of the most vulnerable people in the working population. Unions have demonstrated genuine enthusiasm for helping vulnerable workers and working with community and voluntary organisations.

“The overall quality of the applications was very high but the bids selected for funding are those which are the most forward-looking and offer the most transformational potential.

“I’ll be following all the projects with interest as they go on to develop new services and design innovative mechanisms for accessing hard-to-reach groups of vulnerable workers”.

A total of 23 applications were received with successful bids including projects from the TUC, GMB, Unison and a range of other unions.

The full list of projects is here

The report shows that a number of significant achievements have been made in the last year, with the passing of the Climate Change Act, developments under New Industry New Jobs, publication of the Low Carbon Industrial Strategy, and the UK Low Carbon Transition Plan.

One example of these steps towards a greener construction industry is the commitment, by construction organisations representing more than a quarter of the industry by value, to the Strategy’s Halving Waste to Landfill target.

The Strategy is also supporting the work of the UK Low Carbon Transition Plan, which is on target to achieve a 34% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in the UK by 2020.

Ian Lucas, Business Minister with responsibility for construction said:

“This progress report demonstrates the Government’s commitment to put in place measures to drive forward the sustainability agenda and support industry with these aims.

“I am pleased to see we are making steps towards reaching these targets, but there is further work to be done to build on these achievements and reach the overarching goals of the Strategy.”

Ian Pearson, Economic Secretary to the Treasury, the minister responsible for improving the sustainability of operations and procurement across Government said:

“We’ve made great strides to develop an effective working relationship with industry to deliver our sustainability objectives, in particular the work led by the Office of Government Commerce on improving the sustainability of the Government’s estate.

“Now our challenge is to maintain this momentum in the face of the current economic climate to ensure we continue to improve the estate and meet our Climate Change Act targets for 2020 and 2050.”

Graham Watts, Chief Executive Construction Industry Council said:

“The first annual progress report from the Delivery Board responsible for rolling out the Strategy for Sustainable Construction shows that much very good work has been done since the strategy was launched in July 2008 but that there remains a great deal yet to do.  The industry – in its broadest sense – is certainly alive to the need for sustainable construction and to the importance of the Construction Commitments and the progress report serves as a very concise point of reference with which to assess progress and exert more combined effort from government and industry”

The construction programme of the London 2012 venues and infrastructure is an example of sustainable construction in action, with the Olympic Park being built to the most comprehensive range of sustainability criteria ever adopted by a large scale project in the UK.  Recycled materials have been used to build the site, and more than half of these have been transported to the site by low carbon transport.

Moving forward, the delivery of the Strategy will be overseen by the newly announced Chief Construction Adviser who will be chairing an enhanced Delivery Board for the Strategy.  This will ensure a higher level of cooperation and accountability between Government and industry in the delivery of its sustainable construction agenda.

Read the Progress Report on the Sustainable Construction Strategy here

Speech by: Lord Drayson
Venue: Saïd Business School, Oxford

CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY

Good afternoon, everyone.

This forum takes place almost exactly a year since barely credible events on Wall Street signalled a dramatic turn for the worse in terms of this global recession. And it’s almost a year since I returned to the Government with responsibility for science and innovation. No connection, I assure you!

Today, I want to reflect briefly on where we are now – and where we are going.

But first, let me simply point out that although I stand here as a minister, I have 20 years’ experience as a science entrepreneur. I’ve been through the stresses of building companies during previous recessions: the bank manager threatening to put my company into receivership; the horrible job of making colleagues redundant; learning the hard way that, in a downturn, an entrepreneur has two jobs – first, survive, and second, plan for the upturn.

I have also served as a member of Oxford’s technology transfer board and on the university’s VC fund board, so I witnessed first-hand the transformation of our top institutions – their growing success at translating IP into profits, their improved attitude to academics pursuing commercial possibilities arising from their own research.

So I know all about the quality of our university spinouts – and the opportunities available for smart investors, especially at a time when asset prices are cheaper and potential returns that much greater.

A year ago, we needed to provide businesses with immediate practical help so they could ride out the downturn and emerge ready to exploit the upswing. The UK needed a strong industrial strategy, focusing on what we do best and fighting hard to keep it on these shores. And we had to get to grips with the problem of scale in early-stage VC, because good quality start-ups with promising intellectual property were withering on the vine.

I believe that we’ve made definite progress on these three fronts.

In terms of tangible help for companies, almost 5,000 businesses have been offered loans worth around £500 million under the Enterprise Finance Guarantee. Almost 200,000 agreements have been reached with companies to spread more than £3.4 billion in business taxes.

“New Industry, New Jobs”, meanwhile – launched this Spring – sets out the Government’s strategy for creating the best possible conditions in which UK businesses can thrive in those industries most likely to drive economic growth and create high value jobs. It explains what we will do to improve Government’s role as both customer and regulator, and in areas like skills development and support for small businesses. The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has been charged with making it happen.

Here’s what that means in practice.

I’ve been heavily involved, for example, in establishing ways to transform the operating environment for one of the key growth sectors: life sciences.

The Office for Life Sciences, created in January, gave itself six months to produce a strategy to that end – driving innovation within the NHS, stimulating investment, making the industry more integrated and marketing it more effectively.

We were true to our word. In July, we announced a range of policies, including the Innovation Pass – a 3-year initiative allowing patients faster access to innovative medicines – and a regenerative medicine investment programme to commercialise R&D.

For me, the Office for Life Sciences has set an important precedent for how we implement industrial activism. It means business coming together with the research base and representatives from across Whitehall to agree the way forward. It means timetabled actions, not vision statements, to establish a global lead in areas where demand is clear and growing – ie focusing on growth to rebalance the economy.

Healthcare is one such area. Ultra low-carbon vehicles is another, where we’re applying the same model.

The new Office of Low Emission Vehicles also has cross-Whitehall participation, and it’s working with the automotive industry, power generating companies and others to exploit commercial opportunities and address the drivers of change. That will involve continued vehicle design and production, infrastructure development and devising the right incentives to affect consumer behaviour.

OLEV is part of a £250 million scheme to deliver a green motoring transformation, as the UK seeks to be first to electrify personal transport.

But let me devote the bulk of my attention to the VC space.

While we’ve taken steps to provide certainty about the future of the Enterprise Investment Scheme and Venture Capital Trusts – so that higher-risk SMEs can continue to secure finance – the key recent development is the new UK Innovation Investment Fund.

Many tech-based businesses are currently fighting for survival in a climate where it’s extremely hard to attract capital for investment and where it’s difficult for investors to sell or go public with other investments as a means to raise capital.

The UKIIF provides hope for many of the 1,100 tech-based businesses dependent on equity finance in the UK: in digital and life sciences, in clean tech and advanced manufacturing – the growth areas of the future.

It will be a 10-year fund of funds with a cornerstone investment from the Government of £150 million to leverage private investments up to a total of £1 billion. Three departments – Business, Energy and Health – have invested, from the conviction that supporting VC-backed companies is an essential way of driving innovation.

We’re currently recruiting a professional and experienced fund-of-funds manager, with a view to the fund being operational by the end of this year.

At that point, it will invest in a limited number of top-tier technology funds, with proven ability to generate returns. The Government will not be involved in investment decisions whatsoever. There is no political agenda.

This is about helping UK venture capital to reach the next level, through a large fund that replicates what the best of US funds already do – making investments at all stages, with the kind of scale that can build companies with global reach.

We have the technology. We have the management. We will have the capital.

That’s why we’re keen to bring in as much private sector investment as possible, and will be marketing the fund both in the UK and globally.

UKIIF represents a great opportunity. The timing is right. The capital commitment from the Government means a significant fund. We can exploit the fruits of our record investment in UK science over the past decade – which has made the research base stronger now than it’s ever been. And we will appoint a manager with the necessary expertise to generate a top-quartile return for us and other investors.

Between real help for business and concrete actions to implement a new industrial activism, I believe we have a good plan to build Britain’s future on the back of our leading position in science.

We are on the verge of getting out of this global recession, and there are some encouraging signs that recovery is underway.

What’s critical now is that we do the right things to drive that recovery on.

Like spending wisely on the programmes that are working, cutting the ones that aren’t, and insisting upon value for money in public services.

Like never losing sight of the fact that the best antidote to public debt is growth: growth that’s generated by science entrepreneurs and engineers taking calculated risks to build fantastic businesses, create jobs and get rich – for themselves, their families and their employees.

One year on from Lehman Brothers, and there’s still a great deal of soul-searching about City bonuses and ill-conceived incentive schemes that encouraged the wrong kind of risk taking.

Reforming the culture of the City clearly remains a priority, but my concern today is that we must not allow that agenda to obscure the need to encourage wealth creation. Our economic future depends on it

The bankers aren’t the issue right now. Science entrepreneurs – and the people who back them – are the ones who count now. People like you.

As we emerge from the downturn, the baton passes to you.

Now is the time to back our high-growth, science-based companies. At this stage in the economic cycle, my entrepreneurial experience tells me that this is the time to invest.

This Government is right beside you. We’re determined to support an economy that enables sustainable wealth creation and entrepreneurship. That removes the barriers and celebrates the successes of our science entrepreneurs – like those competing for the new iAwards this November.

Britain is already the best place in the world to do scientific research. We need to make it the best place in the world to build a science-based business too, and the best place to be a science entrepreneur.

I’d like us to spend the rest of our time today talking about how we do that.

Thanks for listening.

Ladies and gentlemen. Thank you Ron.

I am very pleased to be here today to help launch this year’s National Consumer Week.

This is an important event in the Trading Standards calendar – and I want to thank you all for the work you do in safeguarding communities and tackling the rogues and criminals who blight our society.

This year’s theme – Know Your Consumer Rights – is an important one.

The last year has been very difficult for everyone, with tough economic conditions putting real pressure on consumers.

It is, therefore, as important as ever that consumers are able to shop with confidence and know their rights in all situations.

As the Department for Business, we remain committed to being the voice for consumers. Committed to creating a consumer and competition regime that puts consumers at the heart of our economic prosperity.

Earlier this year we published our Consumer White Paper, which set out how we will deliver real help for consumers now and make changes to empower and protect consumers in the future.

This includes providing:

• Self-help debt advice to help people take control of their finances;
• Tougher powers for dealing with rogue traders;
• A review of the regulation of credit and store cards; and
• A ban on unsolicited credit card cheques.

We will also be introducing a new consumer advocate, whose role will include improving the co-ordination of consumer education and information campaigns.

And we will set up a new national specialist team for internet enforcement to tackle scams which rip off consumers and deter many from buying goods and services over the internet.

All this builds on much of the work we have already done to help consumers in the last year, including more funding for debt advisers, tackling rogues through the Scambusters initiative and cracking down on loan sharks.

The Know Your Rights Campaign

A big part of the new strategy is about improving consumers understanding of their rights. Empowered consumers who know their rights are confident consumers – and confident consumers spend the cash which helps business grow. So everybody wins.

And there’s a strong case for improving awareness.

My department receives many letters from consumers who have to fight for their rights. They may not always make the headlines, but their stories will be familiar to us all.

For example, how often have you taken a faulty product back to the supplier, only to be told that it’s outside the warranty period so you’d have to pay for any repairs or replacement yourself?

That happened to a lady from Cumbria, who bought an engagement ring, only for two of the diamonds to fall out of their setting. It was outside the guarantee period and the shop refused to pay for repairs.

Unsure of her rights, she sought advice from Consumer Direct and was told that under the Sale of Goods Act a product should be of satisfactory quality. The expiry of a warranty cannot take away from that.

Armed with this knowledge, and a template letter downloaded from the Consumer Direct website, she wrote to the store and received an immediate response and a full refund for the entire cost of the ring.

It’s one of many stories – but they don’t always have a happy ending.

In research carried out by BIS recently, we found that more than a quarter of shoppers are more likely to complain about goods they have bought during the recession.

According to Consumer Direct, the top ten most complained about goods so far this year include TVs, laptops and women’s clothing. And top of the list (surprise surprise) was second hand cars.

While many people say they are confident in using their rights, we have found that large numbers of shoppers – mostly those from poorer backgrounds and young people especially – have little knowledge about these rights.

And evidence suggests some businesses still need to improve their attitude to consumer rights. Our research showed around a third of shoppers felt retail staff had tried to ignore their consumer rights when they tried to return goods or get a refund.

But it’s not just about shopping in the High Street. Consumers are now just as likely to buy their goods on-line – and feel just as likely to be ripped off.

The on-line shopping market has grown rapidly in the last few years – worth more than £21 billion a year in the UK alone. More than 20 million people shopped on-line last year. And this figure will continue to grow.

So today I am pleased to be able to launch the ‘Know Your Consumer Rights Campaign’ (also a White Paper pledge) – a joint initiative led by BIS with Consumer Focus, OFT, Consumer Direct and the Trading Standards Institute.

The message at the heart of our campaign is simple – know your basic consumer rights. Remember, all goods must:

• Fit the description given
• Be of satisfactory quality, and
• Be suitable for purpose

And we say to people – if you want to find out more about your rights, contact Consumer Direct, the national advice body for information about consumer rights.

Consumer Direct has been a big success since it was launched by my department in 2004. Now managed by the OFT, it answered almost 1.6 million calls and e-mails in the last year. These include more than 870,000 complaint cases – a year-on-year increase of almost five per cent.

The OFT estimates Consumer Direct generated £127m in savings for consumers.

Our campaign will involve working in partnership with retailers in-store and online to convey these messages.

The campaign already has the support of business as well as consumers. Companies we spoke to as part of our Consumer Law Review last year said good business has nothing to fear from consumers knowing their rights.

In fact, those that do best are those who understand their consumers and are quick to fix problems when they occur.

That’s why I’m pleased that so many big name retailers have already signed up to support our campaign, including Tesco, Asda and the DIY retailers B&Q and Wickes.

We also have on-line partnerships with clothing outlets Asos.com and Figleaves.com as well as Whatafind.com.

A big thanks to all of those retailers. I see that many of them have representatives here in the audience today.

But this is just a start and we want to encourage more firms to come on board and help us promote consumer rights.

Conclusion

Today consumers will be able to speak to advisers about their consumer rights on this special exhibition stand.

The TSI will also be holding sessions at Bluewater for businesses who want to know more about improving training for staff to better understand consumer rights.

The campaign will continue over the months ahead. Our goal is to create better informed consumers. Consumers who know they have rights and know they have the full protection of the law when they need it.

It is these consumers who can best contribute to the economy, spending with confidence and helping UK business prosper and grow in the global marketplace.

Thank you

The Know Your Consumer Rights campaign begins as a new BIS-commissioned survey shows that one in three people feel their consumer rights have been ignored. And more than a quarter of people (28%) say they are more likely to complain about goods they have bought during the economic downturn.

Consumer Minister Kevin Brennan said: “Robust protections are in place to support consumers. But we want to see a dramatic improvement in awareness of those protections and rights.

“Knowledgeable, confident consumers are much more likely to get a fair deal, save money and get the right result when things go wrong. This is especially important in the current economic climate, when every penny is even more precious than usual.”

The survey of 2,000 people found that 58% have complained to a store about goods, asked for a refund or an exchange between one and three times in the past three years. A third of respondents have done so more than three times in the past three years.

Know Your Consumer Rights is focused on making sure consumers know they are protected and are confident using, the key legal rights if something goes wrong:

• Goods must fit the description given.
• Goods must be of satisfactory quality.
• Goods must be suitable for purpose.

The campaign is signposting people through to the Consumer Direct website for more detailed advice on their rights.

BIS is working with the Office of Fair Trading, the Trading Standards Institute, Consumer Direct and Consumer Focus to deliver the campaign, which will run until 2010.

Vivienne Dews of the Office of Fair Trading said: “When people are aware of their rights and businesses respect their obligations, consumers can shop with confidence, which is good for them and good for business.”

Read more on the Consumer Direct website

The Know Your Consumer Rights campaign also aims to provide best practice advice and training to businesses.

Visit BusinessLink for free online training and information

The 2008 Fair Treatment at Work Survey (FTWS) also shows that problems with specific employment rights have fallen with more people prepared to seek information and advice on problems that do arise. In particular, problems with pay and working time (including annual leave) have more than halved since 2005.

Minister for Employment Relations, Lord Young, said:

“The results of the Fair Treatment at Work Survey are very positive. They show the real progress we have made in raising awareness of workplace rights amongst employees and employers”.

“But whilst these are good results, there are a number of vulnerable groups who are still more likely to have problems at work and be less aware and knowledgeable about their rights than the general population. That is why the Government will be announcing further help for vulnerable workers later this month”.

Key findings include:

78 per cent of the working population feel well or very well informed about their rights generally compared with 65 per cent in 2005

85 per cent claim to know where to find information on their rights if they need it compared to 76 per cent in 2005

Specific employment problems affect around 27 per cent of the working population compared with 41 per cent in 2005

In particular problems fell significantly with; pay (22 per cent in 2005 to 10 per cent in 2008), hours/days required to work (12 per cent to 6 per cent); rest breaks (13 per cent to 5 per cent) and annual leave (13 per cent to 5 per cent).

More people with problems are prepared to seek advice or information for their problem (72 per cent) compared with 2005 (53 per cent)

The Government is currently in the second year of a three year campaign to raise awareness of the workplace rights they enforce. The first year targeted agency workers, and led to an increase of 300 per cent in calls to the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate helpline. The next stage of the campaign will be announced later this month.

Gervase MacGregor FCA and Guy Newey QC were appointed as inspectors under section 432 of the Companies Act 1985 and instructed to investigate the affairs of MGRG, its parent company Phoenix Venture Holdings (PVH) and MGR Capital Limited between the purchase of MGRG from BMW in May 2000 and the date of it entering administration.

The inspectors investigated the actions of the directors of PVH throughout their 5 year ownership – particularly Peter Beale, John Edwards, Nick Stephenson and John Towers, known as the Phoenix Consortium.

They also investigated restructuring changes within the Group which led to the creation of 33 separate companies throughout that period; the scale of financial rewards made to the directors and the events which led to administration itself. This included the role of Government to secure bridge finance while take-over discussions took place with Chinese car manufacturers Shanghai Automotive (SAIC).

The inquiry studies the role played by professional advisors including auditors and corporate finance advisers Deloitte and lawyers Eversheds; aspects of corporate governance; and financial statements and audit arrangements including the transfer of assets.

Report on the affairs of Phoenix Venture Holdings Limited, MG Rover Group Limited and 33 other companies – Volume I – size 3.5 MB

Report on the affairs of Phoenix Venture Holdings Limited, MG Rover Group Limited and 33 other companies – Volume II – size 3.0 MB

Good morning everyone. It’s a great pleasure for me to be able to join you this year.

It is great to be in Edinburgh, and to see an example of the breath of higher educations intuitions – ancient and modern, generalist and specialist. Their contrasting histories, strengths and plans for the future illustrate not only what makes Scottish higher education such a vibrant place, but also the reasons why I feel such excitement when I look around British universities as a whole.

Your President said earlier that it’s wrong to see our university system as a hierarchy rather than as a series of institutions with overlapping and contrasting missions. That is a view with which I associate myself fully.

Yesterday evening over dinner I was glad to renew some of the acquaintances I’ve made in the English university system. But I was also especially pleased to have the chance to meet university leaders from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

And it was, of course, a special pleasure to be able to congratulate Tim O’Shea on his appointment as chairman of JISC.

Last year in Cambridge, I know that John Denham spoke to you about how many new developments there had been for the sector in England in the first year of the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills.

As if to prove John’s point, the world has now moved on and DIUS itself is now a part of history. But change continues. Not least here at UUK with the arrival of Steve Smith and, only last week, Nicola Dandridge. I wish them both well in their new posts.

Of course, Steve has already made a significant contribution to the debate on higher education – whose progress was the theme of John’s speech. The debate has carried on since the creation of the new Department and is now moving towards its conclusion.

Autumn will be busy, and this year feels busier than last. A new framework for higher education in England will be presented by Peter Mandelson.

We’ve made clear that we want the Framework to describe the vision of how Government will support universities and employers in working together to balance the supply and demand of high-level skills and the many other economically valuable things that our universities deliver.

My colleagues and I see universities as being central to our efforts to build a strong economy. My Department’s expenditure on higher education in England this year will be over £10 billion. And that’s not including more than £3 billion of the UK science budget, a large part of which of course goes to universities. One of the ways the taxpayer’s investment in the system is repaid is in the stimulus for economic growth that it delivers back.

The economic focus of the Framework will be of particular benefit to the key growth sectors we identified in the New Industry, New Jobs strategy paper. We are also working with HEFCE to look at how we can develop the funding model to help the sector further increase its economic contribution. That may mean making a larger proportion of funding contestable. But that raises important and complex questions, and our thinking on it is still developing.

That’s why the Framework is likely to ask you to move further and faster down the path you’re already on towards greater emphasis on economic outcomes. But it does not mean that we intend to take an instrumentalist approach to higher education, nor to abandon the belief that the pursuit of knowledge is a valuable end in itself.

The recession is producing challenging times for universities, just as it is for other sorts of businesses. And those of us in Government face real challenges ahead, too.

I don’t pretend the current position is easy and that we don’t have a huge task before us. But it’s a task we are determined to carry out successfully. And I know it’s one in which we have the full support of the university sector.

Let me quote just a few examples of what you’re already doing to help.

This year, there will be more students going to university than ever before, taking advantage of the record number of funded places on offer. We expect 50,000 more accepted applicants than just three years ago. And we announced in July an extra 10,000 places to support the new industries new jobs initiative. This will help to absorb the extra demand for places we have seen this year and the pressures your institutions have faced during clearing.

I must pause here to say a special thank-you to those institutions that have taken up the challenge of making these new places available at short notice.

We have also continued to expand Foundation Degrees and look likely to achieve our target of 100,000 participants next year. Likewise, the signs are that we hit our target of 5,000 employer co-funded higher education places this year.

Not only are we working to increase the vocational impact of higher education itself. We’re also trying to create more routes into higher education for people who hold vocational qualifications. Already, over 100,000 of them enter university every year. We need to grow that number, and grow it rapidly.

The interim findings of a study led by Professor Joy Carter raised a number of issues around progression to higher education through vocational routes that are helping to inform our thinking around the new Framework. I look forward to receiving her final report this autumn.

Clearly, there remain longstanding difficulties associated with any effort to promote parity of esteem between vocational and academic pathways. Many of these seem to stem from some people’s scepticism about the value of vocational qualifications and limited – albeit growing – exposure to them.

That’s why I warmly welcome the work that’s being done to improve the position. I want to especially welcome the progress that has been made towards a tariff rating of apprenticeship frameworks.

We have brought the worlds of higher education and of work closer together in other ways, too.

We have created the Economic Challenges Investment Fund in which HEFCE and the sector jointly fund initiatives to help economic recovery and which will benefit over 11,000 business and 50,000 individuals. Without your sense of initiative and willingness to roll your sleeves up that just wouldn’t be happening.

And we have introduced many graduate internships. There has been strong progress on these. We have hit our initial target of 5,000 places early, and are now moving well beyond it.

So I’m very pleased to be able to announce today the creation of up to 1,500 more placement opportunities in a new Graduate Low Carbon Future Leaders scheme.

Initially, these will help support the low-carbon marine energy industry in the South West of England and the low carbon vehicle industry in the North East. The scheme will benefit graduates by giving them hands on experience and improving their job readiness in an emerging sector of the economy where future jobs growth is predicted. Your universities will be key partners in delivering this scheme.

While I’m on the subject of the importance of giving young people practical experience of work, I want to say a special word about apprenticeships, which were a subject close to my heart even before I became Skills Minister back in 2007.

Apprenticeships have always laid a firm foundation for careers in manual trades. But we’ve proved that these days there’s no reason why the same model shouldn’t be used to open up routes into less traditional areas – like the professions and the public services. That includes the university sector. Some institutions are already to offering apprenticeships, but many others aren’t. And that’s why I want to encourage those of you whose institutions aren’t yet involved to take advantage of the work UUK and GuildHE doing to help institutions which have offered apprenticeships to share their experience with others.

UUK’s publication From Recession to Recovery showed very clearly that our universities are standing by Britain at a time when what universities produce has never been more necessary. And in its turn the Government has stood by them. In funding terms, universities have had it good for more than a decade.

Nevertheless, it’s no secret that current levels of public investment are unlikely to be sustainable in future. And indeed, I know that you’re already feeling the pressure that comes with the need to make more efficiencies.

The sector’s future prospects depend on how you face up to the financial challenges that are coming. Not least, that includes by taking a disciplined approach to pay and pensions.

But there are also more positive steps you can take, like continuing to diversify your sources of income by encouraging endowments or providing bespoke training. And by making the most of the knowledge that you produce.

Even in a tight spending environment, there’s no reason why your income can’t increase. Steve Smith spoke earlier about the proportion of GDP that this country spends on higher education being half that spent by the USA. And he’s right. But spending relative to GDP isn’t just about the Government. Private investment in universities has not kept pace with the huge increases in public spending that the last decade has brought. Any sensible analysis can only conclude that you need to find new ways to leverage more private money into the system.

And you need to make sure you take advantage of opportunities – international as well as domestic – whenever they arise.

I’ve just got back from a trip to the USA. There, President Obama recently announced a new billion dollar investment in science and research as part of its stimulus programme. That means a lot of money going into US universities and a lot of US universities looking for research partners abroad. Officials in the Department of Commerce, the White House, and in universities confirmed the importance of this investment.

While many British institutions are able to make some use of partnerships individually, the British Ambassador to the US was clear that corporately and collaboratively there is more to do.

That is why I have set up a new advisory forum under my chairmanship – the International Education and Research Advisory Forum – to bring together representatives from across Government and the higher education sector, including the British Council, to develop a more strategic and joined-up focus to our international work. The Forum had its first meeting earlier in the summer and will meet again in November.

Benefiting from knowledge transfer and the intellectual property that flows from it depends on a strong research base, a strength that was confirmed by the results of last year’s Research Assessment Exercise. A large part of the value of the RAE was that it was a UK-wide exercise that allowed the benchmarking of all our institutions. And that is why I welcome the involvement of the authorities in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in the development of the new Research Excellence Framework.

In a few weeks time HEFCE will be consulting on proposals for the REF. For the first time, the REF will explicitly assess the impact that this excellent research has on the economy and society.

And since these impacts are things that happen outside of the academic realm, the consultation will propose that the panels assessing impacts will include a large proportion of the end-users of the research – businesses, public services, policymakers and so on – rather than just academics commenting on each others’ work.

I want the REF to send a strong signal and give a strong financial incentive for departments to not only do excellent research but find ways of helping turn that into impacts that benefit the economy and society as a whole.

Despite some people’s fears, we will not be solely asking panels to count the number of spinout companies or income from business. We will want panels to assess a whole range of impacts. Improved products and services for business are important, but so are things like improved quality of life, and better evidence-based Government policy-making.

Of course, the benefits to universities of producing research with impact aren’t only found in public funding. So it’s in everyone’s interests that we help you manage your institutions’ intellectual property effectively. That’s an area in which the new Department can help all UK universities. So we’re currently working with the Intellectual Property Office and UUK to update the handbook on intellectual property that they published in 2003.

Despite all I’ve said so far, I know some people don’t think our universities are doing a good job.

Last month, the chairman of the Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Select Committee criticised you for failing to safeguard standards.

Personally, I regard Phil Willis’ comments – intentionally made on a Saturday morning to get maximum media coverage – as a piece of political grandstanding rather than a serious contribution to the debate. And I think the facts contradict him at every point.

I don’t recognise the picture he painted. I don’t think we need what amounts to a national curriculum for higher education and we certainly don’t need the ossification of the university system that would inevitably follow. And I don’t believe that diversity in the system is the same thing as inconsistency.

But having said that, I think there does remain a real challenge for you on quality in a consumer-driven 21st century.

Even if you aren’t complacent about quality, you sometimes appear to be. I think you have to recognise that and deal with it. This is indeed another area in which you have to get better at telling your story.

For English and Northern Irish institutions there will be an excellent opportunity to do just that over the coming months as you contribute to the development of the quality assurance system that will follow the current audit cycle. I know that the sector bodies are committed to developing a quality assurance system that is flexible and transparent as well as rigorous.
Clear and accurate information must be a big part of that. Learners need to know up front what their courses will involve, how much teaching they’ll get, how much independent learning is expected, and how they’ll be assessed. They should also know what happens to students when they graduate.

That’s why I’m very pleased to announce that HEFCE will be sponsoring research to find out just what information potential students want, so that they go to university understanding what to expect of their student experience.

Again, I’m not advocating a one-size-fits-all approach to things like contact hours and assessment methods. University teachers, like good teachers everywhere, need the space to express themselves and inspire their students. But I see no reason why, in any properly-planned course of study, it should not be possible to give prospective students a very clear idea of what they should expect. Quite apart from anything else, it’s more fun to teach well-prepared and motivated learners than students to whom everything comes as a surprise.

And I’m sure it won’t surprise you that this is a subject on which the Higher Education Framework will have more to say.

Quality is one of the main factors that attracts overseas students here. And the growing internationalisation of university curricula can only improve the quality of our own students’ experience.

And as we saw earlier this week, the most recent Education at a Glance figures from the OECD continue to provide evidence of our strong performance.

I know that many of you have been very concerned about the ability of the new points-based visa system to cope with the traditional August spike in applications from international students. I have been working closely with my Home Office colleague Phil Woolas to ensure that we get the balance right between maintaining robust visa arrangements whilst at the same time ensuring that institutions are able to recruit genuine international students simply and efficiently.

I was pleased to be able to host a meeting with Phil and vice chancellors towards the end of July to thrash out what were a few outstanding issues. And the latest information I have from the UK Borders Agency suggests that the teething problems that were experienced earlier in the year have by and large been resolved.

But internationalisation is not simply about numbers of international students choosing to come to the UK. The international activities of our institutions are as diverse as the sector itself. And increasingly we are seeing a greater emphasis on partnership-building and collaboration.

This is very welcome. But, as I said earlier, I also believe there is scope for this to be taken to a higher level as we look ahead. And here I think we in Government can help by providing a more strategic and clearer context within which institutions carry out their international education and research activities.

I know you have chosen European higher education as one of the themes of this conference and that is welcome. I attended the meeting of Ministers responsible for the Bologna process in April. One of the main issues we discussed was the importance of student mobility. And that’s a big challenge for you. We know from experience that compared to countries like France and Germany, significantly fewer of our students choose to spend time abroad.

I take that seriously. And it won’t come as a surprise to you that Peter Mandelson does as well. From our discussions I can tell you that his current responsibilities for trade as well as his experience as EU Trade Commissioner means he sees great value of initiatives like Bologna and the various European mobility programmes.

Employers tell us that they value the kinds of skills and experience acquired through periods of study abroad. And I have no hesitation in saying that is an area where we need to raise our game. So I urge all of you to look at ways in which course curricula can be adapted and made more flexible to include the possibility of short periods spent abroad . And I am not just talking Europe here – we should also think further afield in the big developing economies such as China and India.

I remain of the view that stepping up our efforts to “internationalise” university curricula can only improve the quality of our students’ experience.

I firmly believe that our university system and the values that it stands for must remain one of the forces that brings our society together and keeps it together. It has shown itself time and again one of the most powerful forces for social and economic progress that we have.

And that’s why it’s a pity that the general public doesn’t know enough about the contribution made by higher education to national life. Some universities have become very adept at marketing themselves internationally. But nationally, public perceptions of the social and economic successes of higher education throughout the UK often remain outdated.

About a year ago, I gave a speech in which I said that the contribution of British universities to their communities is every bit as strong as that of their US counterparts. That has been borne out by all you’ve done since then to help your communities in what is a difficult time.

But when I spoke last year I also pointed out the contrast between how much American universities make of their economic and social contribution and how little many of our own institutions do. Visit the website of any US State university and you’ll see what I mean. The payback that taxpayers get for their investment will be right up front – in words, in figures and in case studies.

I called on you then to emulate that example. For you not only to be proud of what you do, but to make the most of communicating it.

I repeat that call today. And in the current spending climate, I hope its importance will not be lost on you.

That’s why I’ve asked the Design Council to convene a workshop discussion of how the university sector can communicate its value better to a broader public. I welcome both UUK’s involvement in this work and Steve Smith’s acknowledgement of its importance in his speech earlier on.

I don’t want the outcomes of the workshop to be either soft soap or hard sell. But I do want us all to emerge with a better strategy for showing, not just stakeholder and those with an informed interest in higher education but also the people who pay for so much of higher education, the scale of the return that modern universities give on their investment.

20 years ago, a policy document called “Meet the challenge, make the change” was published by the Labour Party. In many ways, it marked the start of the process that brought us into government in 1997. The final thing I want to do today is to urge you to be equal to the challenges that change now poses for you. To be flexible enough to do what has to be done to keep pace with a changing world, yet strong enough to uphold the great values for which our universities have always stood.

How well you do that today will determine whether you’re able to deliver everything Britain asks of its universities tomorrow.

Thank you.

Many of these new business partnerships demonstrate UK capacity in low carbon business solutions, which will benefit British businesses while helping China meet its tough environment and energy efficiency targets.

Addressing a low carbon business solutions forum organised by UK Trade & Investment in Beijing on 8 September, Lord Mandelson said:

“Across the board, the UK can offer the knowledge, technology and experience to help our two economies de-carbonise. The UK has world-class climate change research institutions and consultancy services in carbon measurement and management. Our architects and engineers are creating designs for the low-carbon cities of the future”.

He later added:

“Pilkington, Greens Power, Zed Factory and The Carbon Trust are examples of outstanding UK companies working with advanced and low carbon technology. These new contracts not only demonstrate the strength of economic ties between the UK China, but also our shared commitment for developing a low carbon economy”.

As well as emphasising business to business collaboration, Lord Mandelson signed with the Mayor of Changsha, home to six million people in China’s Hunan province, a bilateral governmental agreement establishing Changsha as the third “Sustainable City”, alongside Wuhan and Chongqing. UK companies are well positioned to win business opportunities arising from the launch of the Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan city cluster project by Hunan government with an initial investment of 70bn RMB (£5.5bn) on 134 key projects.

In Beijing Lord Mandelson also argued for greater access for UK goods and services suppliers to China’s rapidly developing domestic markets. He was delighted to receive confirmation from the Chinese government that regulators are in the final process of approving a new business combination of Bank of China, Standard Life and Tianjin Economic & Development Area.

In Shanghai Lord Mandelson also attended the groundbreaking ceremony for AstraZeneca’s new US$100m Innovation Centre China in Zhangjang Hi-Tech Park – one of three flagship R&D projects by major UK companies in Shanghai, along with GSK and Unilever.

Premier Wen praised “the tremendous contribution made by Lord Mandelson in strengthening and deepening EU-China and UK-China relations over many years.”

The meeting was very friendly and warm and focused on a number of areas including strengthening co-ordination between the UK and China ahead of the forthcoming G20 Summit in Pittsburgh.

Both sides agreed on the need to keep markets open and resist any temptation to erect barriers to free trade. They were very clear that protectionism was not in the world’s interest and agreed on the enormous importance of concluding the Doha world trade talks as soon as possible.

Lord Mandelson, who was accompanied to the meeting by a British business delegation which has been with him throughout his visit to China, also stressed the importance of further work to allow companies to list and invest on each other’s Stock Exchanges.

Lord Mandelson and Premier Wen were united on deepening and strengthening co-operation between their two countries, Premier Wen recognising that China now invested more in the UK than in any other European economy and that Britain invested more in China than any other European country.

On climate change Lord Mandelson urged greater co-operation given the importance of December’s Copenhagen Climate Change Summit and the business opportunities which flow from the production of green technologies and goods. He also urged China to agree a carbon emissions target. Premier Wen said China would work hard for success at Copenhagen.

In the context of EU-China relations both regretted the lack of progress in relation to Market Economy Status (MES).

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Good morning.

As you may know, I’m rather keen on cars. It goes back to my boyhood growing up near Brands Hatch, and it has stayed with me throughout my life. It got me my first job at British Leyland as a sponsored engineer in 1978 ,and fuelled my passion for motor sport, which took me racing at Le Mans in the 24-hour race this June.

I tend not to count the race and road cars that I own, so as not to alarm my wife – but it’s certainly into double figures and includes some of the iconic great British cars of the last 40 years, including the Low Drag E-Type, the DB4GT, the March 712, the Vanquish and Lotus 24, the Mini Cooper (the new one).

I say that to stress to you how much of an enthusiast I am for cars and for the British car industry – and how important I believe it is for our country and for our economic prosperity that we have a successful car industry in the UK.

However, we all know how tough the last 12 months have been since I last came to this very same event.

I believe the global credit crunch, following as it did the spike in oil prices, has cruelly exposed the global overcapacity in the car industry, and accelerated the radical shift that is taking place in consumer attitudes to cars – and low-carbon cars in particular.

Our job, together, here in the UK, is to embrace this new reality and seek out the opportunities that this very difficult environment presents for the renaissance of a British car industry. Because I believe it does present such opportunities, and the very fact that this audience is so much bigger this year than last shows that you do too.

We have seen a hollowing out of our industry over past decades as much of the automotive R&D and major supply chains of the industry have gone offshore – and we have an industry that does lots of final assembly but not enough of the high added value, top-tier original equipment manufacturing.

The switch to low-carbon is our opportunity in the UK to use the tremendous expertise we still have in our automotive science and engineering base, and team it up with other expertise from clean-tech, defence and motorsport to create, here in Britain, the next generation of low-carbon cars that global consumers are desperate to buy.

We need radical new approaches that challenge the orthodoxy of vehicle design, manufacture, performance, maintenance and disposal. The complete life cycle. We need to ask difficult questions – and find better answers. Because the pace of change and technological innovation to drive performance with low-carbon impact is pushing hard on the industry

If we in the UK come up with the answers faster than the competition – and if we implement them with real drive – then we will recapture some of the market share we have lost.

That is our opportunity – and we must grab it.

This Government is right beside you to bring more power to your elbow. Not to bail out the past. But to create and capture the future.

So my message at this second Low Carbon Vehicle event is more focused and more emphatic than my message at the first one last year. Indeed, “focus” has become a theme for me as science minister – in urging the research community and business to actively prepare for an economy in which we concentrate on industries where growth is strongest; where the UK has a realistic prospect of being a global leader; and where we possess real competitive advantage.

In the car industry, I believe that means making a distinction between low-carbon and ultra low-carbon vehicles. That’s the area of greatest technical challenge but, as so often in life, it’s the area of greatest opportunity too. Our priority must be to make the world’s leading ultra-low carbon car industry in the UK.

We need to build on our domestic strengths and know-how in light-weighting, aerodynamics, powertrains, chassis engineering and styling. These are fields of British expertise.

But, we must take a strategic view of where the greatest opportunity lies for the UK, and low-carbon is an area of stiff international competition already.

By contrast, ultra-low carbon is a much more promising area, where our potential to compete with the likes of Japan, Germany, France and the US – California, in particular – is that much greater. Its also an area where our science base and inventiveness can be leveraged to a greater extent.

What’s more, we’re dealing here with a set of challenges on an entirely different scale.

There’s the R&D aspect, of course, necessary to produce plug-in hybrids and all-electric vehicles. The race is on to be early to market with viable cars, and then to build brands with global reach. But let’s face it, electric cars are not new. Recently I saw a collection of low carbon vehicles, some of which were over 100 years old. One, built in 1907, had in-hub electric motors!

Then there’s the critical matter of consumer behaviour.

Let’s be honest – there’s little public appetite for strange looking and poor performing cars, whether they are environmentally friendly or not. People want performance and efficiency.

For this to work, we must present consumers with vehicles that contain the “wow” factor – a full range of vehicle classes, not just underpowered city cars whose handling leaves many people cold. (There can be no cynical manipulation of emissions regs by trying to sell re-branded low-emission city cars packaged alongside high-emission luxury cars to average down emissions across the range.)

We must also offer people elegant systems engineering to shape consumer behaviour. I’m thinking of Oyster cards, which have made travelling around the capital so much easier, and mobile phone services, where customers don’t pay for expensive handsets and aren’t bothered by the complexities of cross-network costs. In fact, given that advanced batteries will be expensive, rental models and a variety of tariff options are likely to come into play. We’ll need to allow consumers to dip into the market and try out these vehicles without significant financial commitments.

That’s just a handful of the problems we need to solve. “Disruptive technology” is an over-used label these days, but when applied to ultra-low carbon electric vehicles, it is entirely appropriate.

I’ve joined you this morning because – self-evidently – these sizeable, interrelated challenges cannot be tackled in an uncoordinated way. There is a clear role for Government here in terms of legislation and subsidies, in creating market certainty for nascent technologies, in building a consensus around long-term goals.

To accelerate this agenda and give it a clear focus and direction the Government is creating the new Office of Low Emission Vehicles, or OLEV. It will bring together all the key Whitehall players – Business, Treasury, Transport, Energy, Local Government – to ensure that we move forward decisively in concert with industry.

We’ve no intention of OLEV being a mere talking shop. It will have a clear programme that encourages demand, supports supply and enables places where people can use these vehicles day to day.

It will have a clear timetable that builds on the successes of the last year. We’ve already allocated around £140 million to the Technology Strategy Board’s “Low Carbon Vehicle Innovation Platform” to help accelerate industry investment and facilitate new partnerships to address technical challenges.

And, back in June, the Technology Strategy Board announced the winners of its £25 million ultra-low carbon vehicles competition. Over the next 18 months more than 340 electric-drive vehicles will be trialled across the UK.

As part of a £250 million scheme to deliver a green motoring transformation, the Government has proposed help worth between £2,000 and £5,000 for private individuals and commercial buyers looking to purchase electric or plug-in hybrid cars when they hit the showrooms – which we expect from 2011 onwards.

We are also using procurement and the purchasing power of the public sector to encourage the development and take up of the latest generation of vehicles.

Through our £20 million Low Carbon Vehicle Procurement Programme. four British companies have been selected to supply all-electric vans to selected public sector organisations within months.

To help make the transition to cleaner, greener motoring we also have to look at how we can support the initial infrastructure needed to make travelling by ultra-low carbon vehicles a real and viable option.

That’s the reason the Government has allocated up to £30 million as seed money to the “Plugged In Places” electric vehicle infrastructure scheme.

I believe that this scheme has the potential to make a real difference and so I’m pleased to announce that it will go live for applications in November, with decisions on the first successful bids expected to be announced in Spring 2010.

I think it makes absolute sense to focus in the short- to mid-term on the electrification of personal transport.

The private car isn’t going away, and our economic growth is inextricably linked to people’s mobility. In big cities, public transport obviously has a major role, but so do taxis and car clubs. And beyond cities, where public transport offers no real “per passenger per kilometre” CO2 reduction versus the private car, we must ultimately replace them with ultra low carbon alternatives.

At the simplest level, then, that’s what OLEV will be working on. If it really delivers, then it will be helping to put the private car at the heart of the ultra low carbon revolution.

But let’s be clear: OLEV’s direction has not been determined from within Government.

It is industry that has set the priorities. Through the New Automotive Innovation and Growth Team, industry has worked with the Government to identify business opportunities and the necessary drivers of change.

Several of the key individuals involved in that process are speaking at this Government-sponsored conference – a conference which is unusual in that the audience is much broader than the car industry alone. The research councils, the Energy Technologies Institute, the Technology Strategy Board and various government departments are here. So are energy companies, local authorities, regional development agencies and others.

I’d like this gathering to become a major fixture in the international automotive calendar. In the meantime, our purpose over these two days is to figure out how – by developing new collaborations and sharing research – the UK can make the transformative shift to ultra low carbon vehicles. A shift by which we go a long way to displacing liquid fossil fuel, improving our energy security and establishing strength in technologies with vast commercial and social potential.

We’re on our way with this. I’ve been lucky enough to test-drive some of the demonstration vehicles. These aren’t poor imitations of petrol cars but examples of high-quality design, engineering and manufacture, including two-seater city cars, SUVs, minivans and sports cars offering bucket loads of torque and fantastic chassis dynamics.

But let me stress, technology is not the biggest challenge we face. The problem – both fascinating and daunting – is to combine innovation and know-how in a whole range of areas to produce a radical new customer experience that can fundamentally change how we get from A to B.

We’re on our way – we just need to speed it up a bit.

Thanks for listening. Now let’s have some questions and comments.

The £20 million Transformation Fund, launched by Government to offer grants for more than 213 innovative informal adult learning projects in England, will bring to life The Learning Revolution, a White Paper presented to Parliament in March 2009.

The projects, many spearheaded by partnerships between public, private and third sector organisations, will help improve mental health, physical well-being, active citizenship and community cohesion, as well as providing a stepping stone towards further learning, qualifications and employment for many people.

Projects include:

• An initiative to engage more than 2,000 adults who are not currently in training, employment or education, through celebrity-led creative music and media tasters, master classes and workshops, led by a partnership which includes Global Radio, the parent group of Heart FM, LBC and Galaxy stations.
• A partnership between Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Executive, Merseytravel, Urbis and a National Trust property which will create ‘learning journeys’ for young people 19-25, older people living in isolation and people recovering from substance abuse. Each learner will use a free bus pass to take journeys around travel ‘lines’, including the Engineering Line, the Football Line and the Mersey Beat Line.
• A project at Tyneside Cinema, in partnership with Newcastle University, to use the cinema’s new spaces and facilities to deliver digital technology, moving image, communications and IT learning to a wide range of people from different social backgrounds and develop online learning tools for others to share.
• A massive campaign, led by Booktrust and delivered through GP surgeries, libraries and Adult Education centres, to inspire thousands of over-60s to take up reading or writing for pleasure.

Kevin Brennan, Minister for Further Education, Skills and Consumer Affairs, said:

“We’re happy to announce 213 successful recipients of our Transformation Fund grants, awarded in the face of stiff competition from a field of 1,400 applications. With projects ranging from creative writing and music to reading and art, it’s encouraging to see so many imaginative ideas for giving adults more opportunities to learn for the love of it.”

“The benefits of learning for pleasure in an informal setting are wide-ranging, and they benefit the community as well as the individual. I hope that many people will develop the confidence and the local connections to take a big step towards a brighter future.”

The announcement about the latest Transformation Fund grants follows the award of £1 million worth of ‘early bird’ funding in July.

Alan Tuckett, Chief Executive of NIACE, added:

“NIACE is proud to have the role of supporting the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills in managing the Transformation Fund. We argued in our response to the Informal Adult Learning consultation that there is no better stimulus for local adult learning providers than the creation of a fund to trigger innovation and new partnerships.”

“There’s already evidence from the ‘early bird’ bids of how creative and imaginative community-based adult learning can be when given the funding to put ideas into practice.”

Informal adult learning encompasses a wide variety of activities and can range from a self-organised reading group in a village hall to a guided visit to nature reserve or stately home. Other Learning Revolution activities include The Learning Revolution Festival: a month-long celebration of informal adult learning that kicks off in October 2009.

To find out more about The Learning Revolution, visit: www.bis.gov.uk/learningrevolution

Thank you for your welcome. It is nice to be back. I first came here when the school was much smaller and the audience far fewer in number.

It is nice to be back in the place where you work to get “the truth from facts” in Deng’s words. It is very apposite for what I have to say this morning.

And also it’s nice to come now, just as you approach the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic. China’s achievements are a cause of celebration for all of us. And I also celebrate the fact that relations between Britain and China have never been stronger. We have fifteen British government departments represented in our Beijing embassy which I think is testimony to the extent and depth of our bilateral relationship

I last spoke here as EU Trade Commissioner. It was during my time in that job that I really became convinced that China’s reemergence as a global power would redefine not only Asia but the whole landscape of international economics and politics.

All this would be difficult and complex enough – but added to that challenge is the task of governing China itself through a period of immense social, economic and environmental change.

Regional imbalances, income disparities, ethnic tensions, provision of education, health, and pensions: these are familiar challenges for most governments. But in China, the scale of these challenges and necessary speed of change is unique in the world.

All of you here this morning are the policymakers of China’s future. And politicians and leaders of my generation – in China, in Europe, in America – need to be acutely aware that the decisions that we are making now, and the decisions that we face over the next few years, will profoundly shape the world that you will face the challenge of governing in decades to come.

You will need to be the most internationalist generation of leaders in China’s history. Although we are slow to recognise it, some of the biggest problems in world politics are no longer questions of how we position our states for national advantage, but how we deploy national action to solve international problems. There is no contradiction between patriotism and internationalism.

The banking and financial crisis is an obvious example, and with it the bigger questions of how we manage a globalised economy. The challenge of development, above all in Africa as well as in Asia. But it is climate change that is perhaps the most pressing and most fundamental. This is a problem that has no solely national dimension – there are no borders in the atmosphere. It has only an international solution by definition, and I want to come back to that later in my remarks.

As someone who has spent a lot of time in international negotiating rooms this should worry me. I have seen some good and necessary global agendas stalled by parochial national politics. The Doha world trade negotiation is one obvious example. I think we are entering a new, pressured phase of globalization – one that will be defined much more by the competition for resources, an urgency to make painful compromises, the demand to change the way we govern the global economy. From policymakers and politicians this will require much more than the usual measure of flexibility. It should force us to aim for much more than the lowest common denominator of agreement because there is so much at stake, with so much more riding on the decisions we take, for so many people.

I want to say a few things about this next phase of globalization today. I will argue that our national responses to the banking crisis and the international recession will be critical to the health of the global economy for a long time to come. If we get this wrong, the consequences could be very far reaching. And China is central to this.

I will argue that climate change confronts us with an even more compelling problem of international cooperation. China is central to this too.

Finally I want to say a little about Britain and Europe and how we can continue to strengthen our relationship with China.

After the financial crisis

The last two decades have been a relatively optimistic time for the global economy – certainly a time of powerful positive economic change in China. If you traveled back in time to, say, 1979, you would find it difficult to find an economist who would predict that the Pacific Rim of Asia was about to experience the biggest and most sustained growth boom in global history. Or that Brazil and Latin America would have their own version of that export-led economic takeoff.

And this economic history didn’t happen by chance. It happened by choice. The choice to open our markets to international trade. The choice to accept a model of production based on global supply chains and the exercise of comparative advantage. The choice of economic internationalism over economic nationalism. The choice of free markets over state capitalism.

Some would argue that the banking crisis has discredited these choices, that they have somehow undermined their validity. I hear those voices both in China and back at home, in the UK and in Europe. I do not agree. I reject that view. The banking crisis was, yes, a warning: but against failing properly to regulate the financial sector and those who operate its standards. A warning about the need to globalize some of the governance of the global economy to take account of the way that the global economy now works in the twenty-first century.

But if this is the first crisis of the global economic age, it is not a crisis of globalization. Of course globalization spread the negative effects of this crisis around the world, but only just as much as it has transmitted the benefits of economic integration across all continents.

It is true, however, that the global banking crisis and the downturn have revealed weaknesses in all of our economies. Many parts of the Western mortgage and investment banking industries suffered what can only be described as a crisis of professional and regulatory competence. Britain’s households carried too much debt and its large financial services sector made it vulnerable to failures in financial markets. Collapsing global demand impacted heavily on export-led powerhouses like Germany and China – which drove home the fact that they need to balance their successful growth models with greater domestic demand.

More fundamentally, there is an imbalance at the centre of the global economy that must ultimately be righted. This is symbolised by America’s massive deficit and China’s massive surplus. It is simply not in the interests of China’s own people that their high savings are used to finance the excessive spending habits of rich countries.

In this picture of the global economy there are three salient points to make in my view. The first, as Premier Wen said back in March, is that this crisis has not undermined the basic case for open economies, in which resources are allocated in the main by markets rather than governments. We need effective governments to define the reach and limits of markets, but companies and industries, including banking, ultimately need the stimulus and the discipline of market competition to drive growth and innovation. It is the private sector in China, it is worth noting, that has produced the most additional jobs in your economy in recent years.

We have learnt some important and painful lessons about relying too heavily on the self-regulating nature of markets. But that does not discredit the case for liberal economics, it does not discredit private enterprise and markets as a whole and we need to argue back against those who see the financial crisis as an opportunity to restore the power of traditional State Control and state ownership.

This will become even more important when the global economy returns to growth and demand starts to put pressure on the supply of basic commodities. We will need global markets and the forces of supply and demand to send the necessary signals to producers to raise their productivity and keep prices down. The alternative is a race to capture supply, forcing prices up, that we will all lose from in the long run.

Of course, in Britain, the Government also places strong emphasis on social protection and personal opportunity along with our commitment to markets and private enterprise. We believe economic efficiency must go hand in hand with social justice. In this model, China has nothing to fear and much to gain from further opening. This will help rebalance the economy, and stimulate moves to high-technology, high-value added products. Resisting protectionism is essential, but not enough. China has more to lose than most from protectionism’s rise. But it also has more to gain through greater openness and greater reform.

The second point to make is that, we face the difficult reality that what happens in the global economy is the result of sovereign decisions by national governments. It is simply not possible for economies the size of China, Japan, the United States or Europe to ignore the fact that their economic policies have an international dimension and a global impact. That means we all have a legitimate interest in the good governance of all economies. That is part of what David Miliband, our Foreign Secretary in Britain, said in a speech at Peking University last year, and described as “responsible sovereignty”.

So while I would not argue that these decisions can or should be simply internationalized – of course, they cannot simply in this way – there is clearly a need for a much greater awareness of this dimension and this need for international coordination and cooperation of our policies. We need a completely renovated machinery of international economic governance, where the implications of national policy can be assessed and the global dimension debated. The G8 alone is not enough. And we are all agreed that the IFIs, like the IMF and the World Bank, need to be stronger and more representative, indeed as Britain has argued in China’s case in those institutions.

The British government believes that, finally, China is completely central to this process. It accounts for almost 10% of global trade and holds the world’s largest store of forex reserves. It is one of the great engines of global demand and may be the largest economy in the world by the middle of this century if the right decisions are taken. China is at great pains to tread lightly as it grows. But there is now no alternative to the full leadership role, that its economic status deserves.

So we might ask: how well has our response to the banking crisis and the downturn so far reflected these three arguments that I have made to you? I think the answer is broadly positive. We have seen relatively little protectionist economic policy, although this clearly remains one of the key potential risks to recovery.

And completing the Doha Round will be very important to limiting protectionism in the future. It is our insurance policy against isolationism. This is an area where Chinese leadership can really help turn things around, if others are prepared to reciprocate.

The coordination of national fiscal stimuli at the London Summit in April of the G20 also gave a significant boost to international demand – not least through the four trillion yuan package and the planned healthcare reforms here in China.

China and the other emerging economies have become absolutely central to the G20 process. Which is why it is so important that we have empowered bodies like the Financial Stability Board, and that we accelerate reforms that will make the IFIs more representative of the global economy they are monitoring and overseeing. Britain is determined to continue to drive forward this agenda when the G20 meets again in Pittsburgh later this month.

The Climate crisis

Alongside the financial crisis and the management of the global economy we now face the huge challenge of acting to limit the damaging effects of climate change, and, in the process of doing so, unleash much ‘green’ economic activity and new jobs during this century. This is a challenge that is central to the development of modern China because of the costs of dangerous climate change in your country and is critical, at the same time, for all of us. The only sustainable route to economic development is based on low carbon, energy efficient technology coupled with open markets.

Unlike in Europe, most of the homes, the offices, the power stations and infrastructure that will exist in the China of 2030 have not yet been built. That great programme, that future, is ahead of you, and it provides a great opportunity for your planning now for a low carbon future. This means that China’s capacity for green growth and innovation is potentially massive. As Europe’s leader in setting low carbon targets, Britain is an obvious partner in this work and a potential source of expertise and investment.

But a key prerequisite for the kind of green revolution that this implies is a global climate change deal at Copenhagen in December. Nobody doubts the importance of issues of equity involved in a deal that seeks to limit the carbon emissions of both the developed and the developing world. Equity is a core value, a principle that needs to be at the heart of these negotiations and of any emerging deal. Nobody would disagree that the rich world carries a unique and additional burden. But rapidly industrializing countries like China, India and Brazil clearly have an important role to play, if there is to be a deal that meets the challenge we face.

If we allow these problems to become intractable, Copenhagen risks becoming an early and defining failure for the global era. A weak deal would also be a more expensive option: expensive not in the costs of compromise and action, but in the environmental and economic costs of inaction. And by an accident of geography that’s a cost that will fall disproportionately on the poor.

Britain, Europe and China

Let me finally make a couple of points about Britain’s relationship with China, which inevitably also involves the European Union’s relationship with China. In this multi-polar world, the challenge for the EU and China is to create a strategic vision of the kind of partnership we want together to build to benefit us both. One that matches the scale of our economic relationship and the importance of our cooperation in the world. One that is based above all on constructive engagement between us.

It also needs to be durable enough to handle the frictions and to allow us to speak frankly to each other. This matters on political issues like freedom of expression, rule of law and civic freedoms.

These matter to us in their own right, but also because they underpin long-term economic development; it is, for example, confidence in the rule of law that has made Hong Kong a successful international financial centre, and why it continues to flourish.

But the need for durable relationships also matters because Britain and the European Union will continue to argue for the improvement of trading conditions for their companies here; better protection of intellectual property rights, wider access to China’s markets and for our foreign direct investment.

We will continue to test some of China’s trade practices in the WTO – just as I am sure China will test ours, as it is China’s right to do so. These things are an inevitable part of one of the largest trading relationships in the world. In the context of a durable relationship they should not cause excessive political volatility.

I recognise from my time as EU Trade Commissioner that the EU itself has an important role to play in making this relationship a success. The European Union – and I know this from my own experience – can be a complex and sometimes contradictory partner. Senior Chinese negotiators often want and need greater coherence from the European Commission, and a clearer sense of who they should be negotiating with. I believe this is one of the key foreign policy challenges for the EU and the next European Commission that will take office in a few months time. We need to develop a clearer and consistent channel for communicating with China, especially on trade and climate change issues, and other key foreign policy subjects.

But getting this relationship right is also a challenge for China itself. The EU is a willing partner. It is not an aggressive power. It is an essential component of a multipolar world and we want to do business, in every sense, with China.

Conclusion: ‘the larger trend”

There has been some talk lately about the age of the ‘G2’ – America and China setting the global agenda together. To my mind this is an attempt to simplify the world in a way that is actually quite unhelpful. In May Premier Wen said in a speech in Prague that ‘the larger trend’ in world politics is towards multipolarity and multilateralism. And I agree

Europe is China’s largest trading partner; Japan and India two of its most complex and subtle relationships; Africa one of its biggest development policy challenges. There is no simple , bipolar template that reflects this world.

If my remarks today have a simple message – and I say this in conclusion too – it is to reinforce Premier Wen’s argument about the larger trend. In global economic governance; on climate change, in geopolitics in general we are entering the era of necessary internationalism.

The choices that we will make in the next few years will be fundamental to our long term prosperity and security. If we are to preserve the open global economy that has underwritten two decades of growth then we will need to draw the right lessons from the banking crisis and keep our markets open and the state playing an appropriate but not dominant role in business and enterprise. If we are to rise to the challenge of addressing climate change then we will need to be both pragmatic and ambitious. Our task as Chinese or Europeans is to be hopeful, to be flexible, to be committed. And above all to see many of China and Europe’s biggest challenges as common problems, in need of shared solutions.

Thank you very much indeed.

The team – who were up against 900 competitors from 46 nations – won an impressive three gold and six bronze medals in skills ranging from painting and decorating to floristry and autobody repair. The UK also won 14 Medallions of Excellence – awards given to competitors who achieve more than the world-class standard of 500 points.

Mark Nevin, 22, (pictured) who won a gold medal and Best of Nation for painting and decorating, said: “This is the most fantastic feeling. I really do feel on top of the world!

“The last year has been absolutely brilliant. To have been given the chance to learn what I’m capable of, to train with some of the best in the industry and to be part of such a great team has been unbelievable.”

Simon Bartley, chief executive of UK Skills which manages Team UK, said: “It’s a tremendous result not just for the competitors, but for their employers, trainers and colleges. We hope to build on this success as we move towards the next WorldSkills Competition, which London will be hosting, where we hope to do even better.”

Skills Minister Kevin Brennan said: “These inspiring young people have demonstrated to the rest of the world just how able and highly skilled the UK is.

“The world-class skills this team have demonstrated are vital to the future success of our economy in key industries such as construction, manufacturing and engineering. It’s more important than ever that we continue to support and invest in the skills of our workforce, helping individuals get into and stay on at work as well as helping businesses stay competitive and prepare for the upturn.”

Read more and see the full list of winners on the UK Skills website.

UK Skills is a not-for-profit organisation and a BIS delivery partner.

Hello everyone.

I’m David Lammy, the Secretary for Intellectual Property in the UK Government and I’m very pleased to have this chance to talk to you.

An Englishman, Harold Evans, called the 20th century “The American Century”. There’s a lot of truth in that. But it was also a century marked by close partnership between the USA and Britain. It was a century in which we made war together when we had to and peace together whenever we could, in which together we laid the foundation of the world’s great international institutions, and in which we together established the global financial system.

It was a century whose culture was dominated by our shared English language, too, in which the way the world viewed itself was defined by Hemingway and Lawrence, Steinbeck and Orwell, Chandler and Christie, Wolfe and Amis. All of whose works have featured in the movies, what is beyond doubt the century’s greatest cultural phenomenon.

British people played their part with you in building that, too. Right from the time Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel, who had come to the USA with Fred Karno’s vaudeville show, first rode the train West.

Our partnership continues today in all of the fields I’ve mentioned, and it remains strong because we continue to share substantially the same interests and values.

And the movie industry remains a symbol of those links. Through it we project on a worldwide screen not just our talent, but our beliefs as well.

In the 21st century, there will be even more consumers, more access and more desire for movies than we saw in the 20th. That’s good for your industry and for my country.

The USA leads the world economically, and in the relative importance of its creative industries. Exports of creative services from the US grossed $71 billion1 in 2008.

But UK creative exports were worth $19 billion, despite our much smaller economy. Our creative sector has grown steadily over the last ten years and currently contributes 6.4% to our economy. Like you, I want to see that growth continue, recession or no recession.

But that brings me to an important point. The challenge of the 21st century isn’t persuading people to watch movies. That demand is there already. It’s making sure those who do watch movies are paying customers rather than pirates.

The experience of sitting in a movie theatre is still something special that people expect to pay for. But piracy – especially through downloads – is a problem that will probably get worse despite our efforts.

New generation broadband access can deliver a DVD’s content in three minutes.

Unless we face up to that we risk losing the strong position we held at the end of the last century. The way people we publish and consume works has changed. Consumers eagerly reached out to grab the potential of 21st-century technology while business and governments sleepwalked into it. They built a digital culture based on access, even if it cuts across the law.

Although creative industries and governments have moved to catch up with the digital world, we still aren’t ahead of the game. And now we must decide whether. what we want balance between anarchy and authoritarianism to be in the digital world of the future.

For me, the balance must always tilt strongly in favour of freedom. But freedom to access material is not the same thing as access for free. If the world wants to continue to enjoy the wonderful dreams that the movie industry creates for it, then the world must be a paying customer to keep the whole exercise financially viable and to allow the investment it needs to grow still more.

That means more effective law enforcement. UK Film Industry research in 2007 indicated that almost a billion dollars were lost to the film and TV industries through piracy. And that’s just not sustainable.

I’m an unlikely candidate for the title role in a remake of The Enforcer. I haven’t got a .44 magnum and I don’t want anyone to “make my day”. But I have no problem about getting tough with the organised gangs who operate multi-million dollar piracy operations, often linked to wider drug and people trafficking rackets.

I went on a police raid myself last year. In one small house we seized over sixty thousand counterfeit DVDs – including pre-release titles – at a street value of over $300,000.

But in spite of everything our law enforcers do, there will be people on the street in my part of London tonight selling illegal copies of virtually any film you might want to see. Especially the ones youngsters like and including films currently on the screens, from big-budget movies like Watchmen to low-budget hits like Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus.

So tackling supply isn’t enough. We need to tackle demand as well. Many otherwise law-abiding ordinary people believe they are causing no harm when they buy or download illegal copyright goods. They think that creators and business have already been well paid for their work.

I want us to reach out to those people. To take to them the message that what they’re doing is wrong.

We can’t afford to underestimate the challenge. A recent report found that on one P2P network at midday on a week day, there were 1.3 million users sharing content – including films. If each downloaded one file per day, this would involve almost half a billion downloads a year.

There’s no single answer to dealing with that. We need solutions tailored to the different challenges. And government, industry and the law enforcement community absolutely must work together on this. By the right combination of enforcement, education and forward-looking policy, we can make sure we build a culture of access that is also legitimate.

But above all, we must protect the livelihoods of actors, screenwriters, animators and the whole vast industry that enables a blockbuster movie to get to the public. The film business matters. The hard work of creators and industry needs to be recognised and rewarded.

The UK film industry under the umbrella of the Federation Against Copyright Theft, supported by many in this room, is one of the biggest contributors to this work. I want to thank them for the work they have done with us.

And we are getting results: we have more than tripled the number of convictions for IP offences from 400 in 2002 to almost 1,300 in 2007. And seizures of products affecting the film industry have increased by nearly 2,000% between 2000 and 2007.

We are securing longer sentences for IP criminals and recovering their assets. Recently the courts handed out an 18-year jail sentence to a criminal involved in a multi-million dollar film piracy network. And prosecuting a criminal gang selling counterfeit goods on the internet, including films, resulted in a confiscation order of over $4 billion.

And we’re not standing still. New work against illicit P2P file sharing, including possible suspension of internet access for persistent infringers, and increased penalties for IP infringement, online and offline. We are sending a clear message: when it comes to piracy and infringement, ‘digital is not different’.

But, as I’ve already said, enforcement is not enough. It is only one part of the story. Consumers, and that means anyone with access to a computer or a cell phone, have taken a look at copyright and don’t like what they see. That creates challenges for you in the film industry and for government.

A question I sometimes ask myself as I look at my own children. Does it make sense to expect a 12 year old surfing the Internet to know what they can and can’t do with the content they find – not just in their own country, but internationally? Yes, we must teach them to respect the law. But can we really expect them to master it before they go online?

And I think most ordinary people just aren’t sure what they can and can’t do – or why they shouldn’t do it.

The teenager on a download site. If there isn’t a way to explain to them in plain English that they’re doing wrong, how can we expect them to understand that they are?

The CD owner who wants a copy on his MP3 player. Is he breaking the rules or just refusing to be ripped off?

The amateur animator who wants to mash up some content she found on the internet. Is she infringing copyright or just exercising her right to free speech?

Some people don’t understand the rules. But others do, and feel strongly that they don’t make sense.

I have some sympathy with that view. Something isn’t right with copyright. Not just in the UK but as a whole. And I want to do something about that.

Since the end of last year I’ve been consulting people on the hard questions. Does copyright work in the Digital Age? Do we need to edit it for a new audience? Is the existence of infringement on a massive scale really is a wake-up call to business and the creative industries as well as governments?

Some people tell me the Internet spells the end for intellectual property. I say they’re wrong. An effective IP regime has an important part to play. I’ve spoken to established rights holders like Universal. I’ve spoken to the newer players like Amazon, Apple and Google. I’ve involved the hardware and telecommunications companies in the debate. These businesses basically want to serve their customers.

But more than 6 months of consultation showed me the critics are right about one thing. The mechanisms by which copyright operates are too complex. Licensing, rights clearance, getting permission to use works… these are all being challenged by the Internet and consumer expectations.

The systems need to keep evolving in the digital age. I don’t want to see copyright, in England, in the USA, or anywhere in the world, lagging so far behind technology that it loses relevance. Some people tell me that content is national. They tell me the solutions lie in my backyard. But content is also global.

That’s true particularly of film. For a century, film has proved itself to be a truly global medium. And technology too is global. So we need to look to global action to solve our problems.

Everyone involved in rights clearance tells me how lengthy, difficult, and expensive it can be for everyone. A computer game developer who wants to use a music clip; a television company that wants to broadcast a classic from its archive with tens or hundreds of permissions to clear; or a film company that wants to produce a DVD remaster of a cult classic. And time is money – they need quick decisions.

The conclusion is obvious – clear and simple systems for rights clearance and permission will benefit everyone.

I want us to tackle this problem if the system isn’t going to collapse under its own weight. But it’s no good individual countries operating on their own. And getting international agreement to change could take a generation. Partnership and innovation by businesses are the way forward, not a rearguard defence of systems that aren’t delivering. We need smart laws, and smart enforcement.

If there’s one battle governments and industry both need to win, it’s the battle to keep the hearts and the minds of the people who pay our salaries. I want to see people wanting more product, buying more, not frightened out of the online store or frustrated because illegal sites are simply better. I don’t want them to be scared of watching a film or making a fan-site because they don’t understand the legal risks. I want confident consumers who choose legitimate content and use it appropriately without the need for special information or technical skills.

I have said that these are industry problems which need industry solutions. I want to see businesses reaching out to form new partnerships. I’m talking about creative companies working with Internet Service Providers to build a web where rights holders are paid, and users get easy access at a reasonable price.

I’m talking about film studios working with technology companies to educate youngsters in the links between innovation, copyright and creative works on the internet.

That’s how we can get to a world where consumers will want to support those that create the content they want while getting the access and services that the new technologies make possible.

That’s how we can begin, to adapt the words of a former US President who knew more than a little about motion pictures, to tear down this firewall.

So this is about striking a balance. I think the UK, increasingly, is getting this balance right. The UK government is acting. And we will continue to put policies in place that make IP infringement easier to detect and sanctions harder to avoid.

But we need to forge a world where there is a consensus – a common sense of fairness and respect. We need people to respect artists and their works because of what they are, not because of the law they fear, or the law they don’t know about.

We need to take them with us on a journey into the unknown. A journey that will be easier and better if we all travel together.

Thank you.

[CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY]

The Prime Minister, Work and Pensions Secretary Yvette Cooper and top employers signed up to Backing Young Britain met 250 young people at a Youth Summit at Birmingham City Football Club today.

The Government pledged 85,000 new opportunities for young people. These include:

• Morrisons pledging new training for every one of its 36,000 employees under the age of 25
• Government providing help to get 45,000 young people into jobs in retail, tourism, leisure and hospitality
• 5000 new apprenticeships from companies including Centrica, Carillion and Royal Mail
• Other companies backing the campaign include Microsoft, Bovis Lendlease, Pfizer and Phones4U.

For full details of today’s Backing Young Britain announcement, see the latest press notice.

Read the Jobs of the Future document (pdf) here.

If you are an employer and want to get involved, see the Backing Young Britain website.

If you are a young person and require more information on your options and the support available to you, see Directgov’s What’s Next campaign.

The new survey questioned business leaders from across eight sectors and found that nearly half (43 per cent) of those questioned believe that cleantech will grow at the fastest pace by 2020, followed by science and technology (20 per cent) and media and entertainment (15 per cent).

The survey highlights how the current economic climate presents new opportunities for new areas of the economy to thrive.

Combined with a growing awareness to find solutions for some of society’s greatest challenges – from tackling climate change to supporting an ageing population – investing now in innovative, high-growth areas will be essential for bolstering the UK economy once recovery kicks in.

Driving the awareness, investment and skills required to power these high-growth markets is essential for Britain’s future. Britain’s chance to showcase our strength to the rest of the world, including our cleantech innovations in the run up to Copenhagen 15, and how our digital strength will enable the first digital games in 2012, is essential for the UK’s ability to meaningfully contribute to the global economy. It is therefore essential for both government and business to properly recognise and promote the importance of these sectors.

As part of meeting this need for recognition; Science and Innovation Minister Lord Drayson and entrepreneur James Caan recently launched the iawards – the first ever Government backed-awards to celebrate achievements in science, innovation and technology.

Science and Innovation Minister Lord Drayson said:

“Cleantech and renewables will play a huge part in helping the UK economy to grow sustainably, but we need to do more to encourage innovation in these and other high tech sectors.

“And that means recognising our best innovators, those who are creating the household names of tomorrow. The iawards will do just that, this inaugural year and in years to come. Make sure to get your entries in by 16 September!”

James Caan said:

“The UK is home to some of the most innovative minds in the world and we must continue to recognise and celebrate the work of these talented individuals. The iawards are all about recognising British achievements, the visionaries behind them and showcasing new the latest developments that will make the UK a better place to live and work. In doing so, we will continue to draw investment, energy and skills to the high-growth industries that will drive our economy forward.”

Further findings:

- 73 per cent of those polled believe that business and government must work together to promote the development of skills needed to bring the UK out of recession

- One in five of those surveyed chose web 2.0 as the best technological development of the last ten years

The iawards in association with QinetiQ includes 13 categories which are open to all organisations, but all entrants must specify the British involvement in any innovation – demonstrating that innovative thinking and development came from a British organisation or team. Siemens sponsor the ‘Next Big Thing’ category and Microsoft Bizspark sponsor the best technology start up category.

The awards categories reflect the greatest challenges we face as a country where science and innovation offer the best chance of developing viable solutions. Each entry must demonstrate how its innovative qualities relate to at least one of the following challenges:

• Addressing the healthcare needs of an ageing society;
• Increasing international security from tackling global poverty to minimising the threat of terrorism;
• Preserving finite natural resources in the face of population growth and climate change; and
• Delivering public services which make best use of new technologies.

They must also demonstrate that the innovation has an impact on one of the Government’s grand challenges for science.

Winners of the awards will be helped by UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) to meet potential business partners at key industry events such as the giant Medica trade fair in Germany and Technology World in Coventry this autumn. They will also receive public relations support from the iawards team. All shortlisted entries and the winners will also have exclusive access to the iawards logo.

Science and technology has been a driving force behind Britain’s export success. Exports for life sciences, for example, rose 19 per cent in 2008. Innovation is also important in keeping the UK as the number one destination for inward investment in Europe. UKTI statistics show that the number of investment projects in creative industries increased by 65 per cent in 2008/9 and in software and computer services by 36 per cent.

James Caan will be hosting a live Web TV show to discuss the findings of the survey on Thursday 27 August, 13:00.

For more information, and to enter, visit www.iawards.org.uk. The closing date for entries is 16 September. The iawards gala dinner will take place at the Science Museum, 16 November, 2009.

The Employment Agency Standards inspectorate – which over the last year has boosted its powers and doubled in size – has won back more than twice as much money for workers since April than in the entire previous year.

Business Minister Pat McFadden said:

“Over the past year we have given the Agency Standards Inspectorate more staff and more powers to protect agency workers. I’m pleased that the bigger, more powerful agency standards team is out there delivering results for agency workers.

“The recession should not be used as an excuse to deny people their employment rights, and the agency standards inspectors are a crucial tool in ensuring this.”

In June, EAS inspectors recovered over £17,000 for four engineers in West Sussex. As a result of not being paid on time, one man had to sell his car to pay his rent, and another had to borrow money from relatives to pay his mortgage. But once EAS inspectors were contacted, the workers received £15,000 within three days, with the remainder arriving shortly after.

Kevin Green, Chief Executive at the Recruitment and Employment Confederation said:

“At a time when many workers are using agencies as a route back into the labour market we must drive workers and employers alike to use agencies which abide by the law and industry standards.

“For many years the REC has argued for better enforcement on the sector and we are pleased to see the inspectorate is taking action at a time when the industry itself has launched its own ‘Serious About Standards’ campaign.”

Kirsty Craig, Managing Director of TEAM (The Employment Agent’s Movement) UK commented that it is great to see the EAS using its teeth to deal with rogue agencies:

“This sort of behaviour does our industry no favours whatsoever and whilst most recruitment agencies more than fulfil their obligations to their temporary staff, there are others who consistently flout the law time and again. These people need to understand that they are not above the law and that appropriate action will be taken”.

The inspectors also recovered almost £30,000 owed to 55 models after a London agency ceased to trade.

Katie Froud, of Albamodel.info, who runs the Model Alliance said:

“The Alliance is grateful to the Agency Standards inspectorate team who acted immediately upon our request to secure funds for models when we were alerted to an agency ceasing to trade.

“It is totally unacceptable that models who work irregular hours with irregular pay can lose the money paid by clients which is due to them”.

The Employment Agency Standards team has recovered money for workers in a number of circumstances, including where agencies had not paid wages owed, where money had been unfairly deducted by the agencies and where workers were charged for services by the agencies that they had not signed up to.

Agency workers can find out more about the rights they are entitled to by visiting www.direct.gov.uk/agencyworkers or by calling the Pay and Work Rights helpline on 0800 917 2368.

The Government plans to appoint a Chief Adviser to Government on Construction to equip Britain’s construction industry with the skills and knowledge to become competitive in the 21st century. He/she will chair the Board responsible for securing value for money from the Government’s procurement of construction, promote innovation and sustainability in the industry, and be responsible for ensuring Government takes full account of the impacts of the regulatory regime on the construction industry.

The Chief Construction Adviser will be independent and report to BIS and HM Treasury Ministers. The successful individual will:-

Chair a new Construction Category Board, which will build on the existing Public Sector Construction Clients Forum (PSCCF), to oversee the implementation and further development of best value Government construction procurement.

Chair an enhanced sustainable construction strategy delivery board to help ensure policy regarding the industry is effectively co-ordinated.

Assess the key barriers to growth in the UK’s Low Carbon construction sector to ensure the UK industry is well placed to serve developing needs and markets

Work with the industry, through the Strategic Forum for Construction, to deliver the industry improvement agenda, including the Construction Commitments.

Promote innovation in the sector, working closely with the Technology Strategy Board and other funding bodies.

Co-ordinate the Whitehall response to reports featuring construction.

Ian Lucas, the Business Minister with responsibility for construction, said:

“We have taken our time to get the role right to ensure that it fits well with a range of new and existing initiatives. But I have heard the calls from the Construction Industry loud and clear since my appointment in June. We are now pressing hard ahead with recruiting. I want to see a high quality individual in place by November”.

Ian Pearson, the Economic Secretary, said:

“This role will provide a central “focal point” for the construction sector acknowledging the value of this sector and the importance of delivering a sustainable and low carbon economy that remains competitive. The Chief Construction Adviser will help ensure that Government secures maximum value for money in its procurement of construction and thus support the aims of the Operational Efficiency Programme”.

Their call to action comes as a new survey shows that businesses believe British innovators are unsung heroes whose contribution to making Britain a better place to live and work often goes unnoticed.

The survey, commissioned by the Department for Business Innovation & Skills, reveals that more than nine in ten business leaders agreed that giving employees recognition will drive entrepreneurship in the workplace.
The survey also found:

• 43% of senior executives surveyed across the UK believe that UK organisations are good at supporting innovative business areas and ideas.
• 63% feel that open communication to discuss new ideas will encourage greater innovation from their employees;
• 43% per cent would consider implementing innovation sessions; and
• 36% would offer cash or stock option incentives.

Science and Innovation Minister Lord Drayson said:
“Businesses are doing a great job in developing the innovations that will drive the country out of recession. It’s time to recognise and honour our best innovators – those who are creating the successful companies of tomorrow. The iawards will do just that – not just in these extraordinary times we find ourselves in, but for years to come. Make sure to get your entries in by 16 September 2009 to take part in this inaugural year.”

Leading entrepreneur and businessman James Caan said:
“The economic downturn presents an opportunity to transform UK business and create a positive climate for the creation of new innovations. Some of the world’s most successful companies, including Microsoft, were conceived during a recession. The UK has some of the greatest minds in the world and thanks to the existing efforts of our entrepreneurs SMEs still make up more than 55 per cent of UK GDP. They must be encouraged and recognised for their work.

“I firmly believe that businesses who focus their energy on nurturing the talent available to them can lead the UK out of the recession. This is why I support the iawards, a long awaited opportunity to fully celebrate and recognise the strength of science, technology and innovation in the UK.”

For more information, and to enter, visit www.iawards.org.uk. The closing date for entries is 16 September. The iawards gala dinner will take place at the Science Museum, November 16, 2009.

Read the full innovation survey press notice here.

You can also follow all iAwards news on Twitter.

Information on the formation of the iAwards can be viewed here.

Higher Education Minister David Lammy said:

“I want to congratulate the hundreds of thousands of students who have worked hard and got the grades they needed to go to university this year and with more than 370,000 students having their places confirmed, more students than ever before will be heading into higher education.

“The Government is committed to funding and growing higher education. This is why students this year are taking advantage of the record number of funded places on offer backed by a generous financial support package.

“Those students who don’t get the grades they need shouldn’t panic as there’s a broad range of options open to them including clearing, reapplying for next year or seeking work experience or training supported by our Backing Young Britain campaign. To find out more you can speak to a trained advisor on the exams helpline on 0808 100 8000.”

For more information on the various options, see the below links.

UCAS helpline
For help with clearing, adjustment or specific questions about an application.
0871 468 0 468

National Exams Result Helpline
The National Exam Results Helpline welcomes calls from students who’ve done A levels, AS levels, GCSEs, Diplomas and equivalent qualifications – including mature students. It’s also open to parents and guardians.
0808 100 8000

Student Finance England helpline.
For those making enquiries about their application for Student Finance.
0845 300 50 90
(Those who haven’t made an application for Student Finance should go to the Directgov student finance page).

UCAS
The official organisation responsible for higher education applications. Students can manage their applications using ‘Track’ and access information on universities and colleges.

YouGo Further
UCAS’ online community for students featuring web chats, essential information and online advisers.

Directgov advice
Official UK Government information on post-exam options and more general advice for 14 to 19 year olds.

The Student Room
Share your personal experiences of Clearing, and student issues in general, in the UK’s largest online student forum.

Make your mark
Advice and inspiration for entrepreneurial young people.

Building on the New Industry, New Jobs agenda as well as our latest advanced manufacturing initiatives announced on 29 July, the support further demonstrates the government’s commitment to the our advanced manufacturing sector, as part of a balanced economy helping to build Britain’s future.

The support, drawn partially from the Government’s £750m Strategic Investment Fund, will enable Airbus in the UK to strengthen its position as a world leader in wing, landing gear and fuel integration systems technologies and ensure the UK plays a leading role in the development of the A350 XWB, as it has done on previous Airbus programmes. This support will create and sustain more than 1,200 jobs within Airbus across Filton and Broughton sites as well over 5,000 within the supply chain across the UK.

Through increased use of advanced composite materials in the construction of the wing and other parts of the aircraft, the A350XWB will be lighter – delivering significant environmental benefits, including around 15% reductions in CO2 emissions – essential to delivering on our low carbon agenda.

Today’s announcement of £340m of support follows on from our commitment to provide £60m of support for GKN to design and develop the rear spar and trailing edge of the A350 XWB.

Business Secretary Lord Mandelson said:

“This agreement is excellent news for the UK aerospace sector and for the thousands of British workers within Airbus and its UK-based supply chain”.

“The UK’s aerospace industry is world-class and capable of competing successfully with companies across the world. We recognise the vital role Airbus, and its supply chain, play in the UK.

“Aerospace is a sector that we are rightly proud of in the UK. It stimulates innovation across industry, demonstrates our capability to work with the most advanced technologies, and provides high-quality, highly skilled employment. It is a sector at the heart of our advanced manufacturing strategy.

“This agreement is further evidence of this government’s long-term commitment to the UK aerospace industry and its future success. Aerospace is one of the UK manufacturing’s crown jewels, and manufacturing is one of the UK economy’s crown jewels.”

Tom Enders, Airbus president and CEO, said

“We welcome the UK government’s decision to invest in the A350 XWB, the most advanced, innovative, and eco-efficient aircraft in its market segment. This partnership with the UK government means that the UK taxpayer can expect a sound return on their investment, and ensure the aviation industry continues to thrive in Europe and around the world.”

In Nottingham today, Business Secretary Lord Mandelson announced an investment of £2m from the Capital for Enterprise Fund to local firm KeTech.

A further £1m investment is being made in Glasgow-based Vamosa, which provides IT systems to businesses and the public sector.

Lord Mandelson said:

“Ambitious and innovative businesses like these are the lifeblood of the economy but tough credit conditions can make it difficult for them to invest in their future. The Government is committed to ensuring that viable companies have the finance they need to grow”.

Ensuring innovative British businesses can access this sort of risk capital is one of the key commitments from the Government’s industrial strategy, New Industry New Jobs. The £75m Capital for Enterprise Fund was created to help viable small and medium-sized businesses with genuine growth potential that would otherwise be unable to secure investment.

KeTech will receive £2m of equity funding from Octopus Investments, which manages £30m of the total £75m.

KeTech Group Chief Executive John Kearney said:

“Since the current economic crisis began, the lack of available credit, even to viable businesses such as KeTech, has significantly impaired our ability to keep growing. As a result, we turned to the Government for help.

“I am therefore delighted that the Octopus Capital for Enterprise Fund is injecting much-needed capital into KeTech. This will play a critical role in enabling us to secure profitable new contracts which regrettably, until now, we have been forced to turn away.”

Maven Capital Partners, which also manages £30m of the £75m fund, is investing £1m of equity funding in Vamosa.

Vamosa Managing Director George Knox said:

“With this investment, we will help to define the global Enterprise Content Governance sector.

“It is our vision for a Scottish business to ensure multi-national organisations and governments receive the highest return on investment from their content assets. Receiving this capital injection from Maven is a proof-point to the opportunities available to Vamosa.”

KeTech

Founded in 1998, KeTech provides communication software and services to the rail industry. It also produces specialist detection systems for use in defence and emergency services markets, together with a range of building management systems. The firm has more than doubled its turnover to £16m since 2006 and it employs over 100 people at six UK sites.

Vamosa

Software firm Vamosa is based in Glasgow and also operates in London and the US. It offers a range and products to businesses and governments that help them to analyse, monitor and maintain all forms of business content. The company was founded in 1999 and has 36 employees.

In a survey of over 4,800 people who had completed a further education course and were out of work when they began their studies, 41% had secured a job two years after they had ‘graduated’, up from 34% the previous year.

Learners surveyed were asked whether they felt further education helped their job prospects after they had completed a college course in 2005/6. 62% of learners now in work said their course was either vital or helpful to getting a new or different job after college.

Among those seeking employment, 64% believed their college course improved their chances of finding work. College courses were also seen by many to boost promotion prospects and job security.

Kevin Brennan, Minister for Further Education, said:

“Further Education colleges are at the frontline of helping those out of work, back into jobs. This research is especially important as it is testament to the benefits of further education felt by those who have actually undertaken a course or training.

“I am delighted such a large majority of learners feel their further education experience has enhanced their jobs prospects and skills. The Government is committed to building on the work of the sector to help people gain the skills the need to get a job or set up their own business which is why we have increased spending on further education to nearly £5 billion in 2009-10.”

In addition, the report showed a substantial decrease in people claiming Job Seekers Allowance from 28% at the beginning of their course, to just 8% a year after completion.

A wide range of lasting benefits were felt by 93% of college learners as a result of their course. Under 25s were most likely to report an increase in knowledge and skills, learners with a long-term disability were more likely to report increased confidence, and a significant proportion of older learners said that they had improved their IT skills.

Going to college has also influenced many learners’ decision to continue education, with 73% likely to undertake further learning or training within the next two years. 26% have already gained a further qualification since they completed their course in 2005/6. One learner said: “The main benefit was the GCSEs I gained – without them I wouldn’t have got on to my university course, so it’s had a huge impact; a lasting impact.”

Maggie Scott, Association of Colleges’ Director of Policy, said:

“Many Colleges place a strong emphasis on helping people back into work through quality training, so it is pleasing to see from this research the positive influence that learners feel colleges and other further education providers are having on job prospects and progression into further learning. There have been real lasting benefits for the thousands of respondents who took part in the study.”

“There is obviously still much more work to be done to help people affected by the current economic climate and we would anticipate greater demand for training by Colleges and other providers and that they will build on the successes indicated by this new research.”

The regional breakdowns, available today for the first time, show that the scheme has proved popular with car buyers across the UK with take-up highest in the South East (18%), the East of England (12%), the North West (11%) and South West (11%). These figures reflect a pattern that is broadly in line with national levels of car ownership, with the highest participation rates for the scrappage scheme in regions with the highest levels of car ownership.

Lord Mandelson, Secretary of State for Business said:

“I’m pleased that we have already achieved over 150,000 new car orders. This is a great deal for manufacturers and dealers, not to mention the customers.

“The scheme has contributed to the 13.5% jump in car manufacturing and the first growth in new car registrations since April 2008.

The additional data also reveal that on average, new cars bought under the scheme have CO2 emissions that are 25% lower than the cars scrapped. The average CO2 figure for scrapped cars is estimated to be at least 179 g/km, compared to a much lower 133.9 g/km emissions average for cars bought through the scheme.

The UK scheme, with £300m from Government and matched funding from manufacturers, is intended to provide immediate support on a short-term basis to boost the car industry and its supply chain during the downturn and stimulate demand. It will also get older vehicles off the road and encourage consumers to invest in new, safer, and potentially more environmentally friendly models.

For three years, supply2.gov.uk has advertised thousands of public sector procurement opportunities worth up to £100,000 – making the website ideally suited to small and medium sized businesses.

The fee that was previously charged to search the site across the UK will now be removed, providing firms with better access to public sector contracts to help their businesses grow.

Business Minister Shriti Vadera said:

“Small businesses are facing significant pressure in this downturn and new contracts are essential for their return to growth.

“We want to support small businesses by making it easier to access the thousands of Government procurement opportunities that are directly relevant to them.

“This free service is an interim step along the way to introducing a single website for all public sector contracts next year.”

Economic Secretary to the Treasury, Ian Pearson said:

“Small and medium businesses are a crucial part of the UK economy and in these challenging times it is essential that we support them in as many ways as possible.

“By introducing a free to use national search service we are helping to create a level playing field on which SMEs can compete with their larger counterparts. This will realise benefits for SMEs, the economy as a whole, and help drive further innovation in public services.”

Debasish Sen, Federation of Small Businesses Trade and Industry committee member, said:

“The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) has been working closely with the Government to put better policies on procurement in place and we welcome this first step to create a free, national, on-line portal that small firms can use to apply for public sector contracts next year.

“FSB research shows that half of SMEs do not tender for public contracts because the process is too complicated and the contracts are too difficult to find in the first place. Making supply2.gov.uk free to access is a first step in the right direction and something the FSB has been pushing for, for a long time.”

Searching for these contracts across the UK was previously only available as part of a subscription service, which cost up to £180 per year.

This announcement is a move towards delivering on a key recommendation outlined in the Glover Review – that by the end of 2010 all public sector contracts should be accessible through a single, free online web portal.

This underlines the value of the RDAs following an independent study earlier in the year that showed overall, every pound invested by RDAs will generate at least £4.50 for their regional economies.

Rosie Winterton, Minister for Regional Economic Development said:

“These reports show that the Regional Development Agencies are playing a key role at the frontline of our response to the global economic downturn. They have risen to the immediate challenge of the recession with one eye firmly fixed on the future and the upturn.

“They have done this whilst achieving their corporate objectives for 2008/09 and improving the overall economic outlook for their regions. By working with their local and national partners, RDAs are making a real difference.”

Speaking on behalf of England’s RDA’s, Richard Ellis, chair of the East of England Development Agency (EEDA), said:

“We’re pleased at the recognition given today to the important work done by regional development agencies. RDAs are delivering vital help and support to businesses during the recession. We have provided £110 million to fund national schemes to support business and we committed quickly to a range of practical measures designed to help SMEs, such as paying suppliers within 10 working days.

“RDAs have continued to invest to create the right environment for the growth of future and emerging economic sectors, such as low-carbon technologies, high-tech manufacturing and digital communications. To support tomorrow’s innovative businesses we are investing £1 billion between now and 2011.”

RDAs Key Achievements

BusinessLink

The RDA funded BusinessLink service has refocused its service to meet the immediate needs of businesses to survive and prepare for the upturn. Over the last year the service has nationally supported 942,166 businesses, the majority of which are Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) which are the backbone of the country’s business community. Businesses can now access a vast range of advice and support through the single BusinessLink portal.

Fiscal Stimulus projects

RDAs have voluntarily and collectively brought forward up to £100 million as part of the Government’s Fiscal Stimulus package. This is targeted at projects which will create a short term boost to the economy by ensuring that critical projects that would otherwise have slowed down or stopped continue as normal.

Area Action Teams

RDAs have been working jointly with a range of partners including Local Authorities, Job Centre Plus, the Learning and Skills Council and Citizens Advice Bureau to respond to companies in difficulty through the Area Action Teams. The primary focus is on redundancies and company closures, and they aim to minimise the impact of these and identify opportunities and sources of support to provide a co-ordinated response to the company and the individuals affected.

Transitional Loan funds

In November Lord Mandelson announced that English regions would introduce Transition Loan Funds (TLF) totalling £25 million. RDAs subsequently increased the funding available to just under £57 million. The TLF were introduced to address the particular circumstances of the current credit market. These have proved very successful since their launch, with over 280 loans, totalling more than £28 million, approved to date, safeguarding over 9,000 jobs.

• RT HON LORD MANDELSON: FIRST SECRETARY OF STATE, SECRETARY OF STATE FOR BUSINESS, INNOVATION AND SKILLS AND LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL
  Overall responsibility for Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, and Privy Council; working part of time in Cabinet Office as First Secretary of State.

• RT HON PAT MCFADDEN MP: MINISTER FOR BUSINESS, INNOVATION AND SKILLS (attends Cabinet)
  Deputises for Secretary of State on departmental business, particular focus on Industrial Activism – New Industry, New Jobs.

• RT HON LORD DRAYSON: MINISTER FOR SCIENCE AND INNOVATION (jointly with MoD, attends Cabinet)
  Responsible for innovation, Technology Strategy Board, science policy and wealth creation from science, Research Councils, Foresight programme – science and society issues, Space, National Weights and Measures Laboratory, Design Council, National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA), Energy Technologies Institute, Commission for Environmental Markets and Economic Performance, British Standards Institution, UK Accreditation Service, Life Sciences (including Office for Life Sciences and pharmaceutical sector), low carbon economy.

• RT HON ROSIE WINTERTON MP: MINISTER FOR REGIONAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND COORDINATION (jointly with CLG, attends Cabinet when Ministerial responsibilities are on the agenda)
  Responsible for strengthening regional economies (including Grants for Business Investment), Regional Development Agencies and sub-national implementation, Solutions for Business (business support simplification).

• RT HON STEPHEN TIMMS: MINISTER FOR DIGITAL BRITAIN (jointly with Treasury)
  Responsible for Digital Britain

• RT HON DAVID LAMMY MP: MINISTER FOR HIGHER EDUCATION AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
  Responsible for building strong relationships across the higher education sector, higher education teaching quality, Higher Education Strategy, Research Assessment Exercise and Research Excellence Framework in higher education, High Level Skills (seeking to increase significantly the number of people qualified to Level 4 (or university level skills) and above), voluntary giving (universities raising independent revenue from donors), student support policy – student grants and loans, all student loans issues, sponsorship of Higher Education Funding Council for England and Student Loans Company, intellectual property issues and the Intellectual Property Office.

• KEVIN BRENNAN MP: MINISTER FOR FURTHER EDUCATION, SKILLS, APPRENTICESHIPS AND CONSUMER AFFAIRS (jointly with DCSF)
  Responsible for further education, apprenticeships, Adult Skills Agenda, engaging employers in skills including Train to Gain, National Skills Academies, Sector Skills Councils, UK Commission for Employment and Skills, LSC sponsorship, Skills Funding Agency set-up, competition policy, consumer affairs.

• LORD DAVIES OF ABERSOCH: MINISTER FOR TRADE, INVESTMENT AND BUSINESS (jointly with FCO)
  Responsible for UK Trade & Investment (reporting jointly to the Business Secretary and Foreign Secretary), advising the Secretary of State and the Minister for Business, Innovation and Skills on overall business policy, working on specific business issues alongside the Minister for Business and Regulatory Reform, Exports Credits Guarantee Department, Public Service Reform, trade policy, Europe.

• BARONESS VADERA: MINISTER FOR ECONOMIC COMPETITIVENESS, SMALL BUSINESS AND ENTERPRISE (jointly with Cabinet Office)
  Responsible for competitiveness, enterprise, growth and business investment, small business, general oversight of Shareholder Executive and its portfolios, Business Council for Britain and the Business Environment Unit.

• IAN LUCAS MP: MINISTER FOR BUSINESS AND REGULATORY REFORM
  Responsible for business sectors (aerospace; marine and defence, automotive; chemicals; construction; manufacturing, materials and engineering; retail; services), Better Regulation Executive, better regulation within BIS, Olympic legacy, sustainable development and regulation including waste electrical and electronic equipment issues, Corporate Social Responsibility, corporate governance, Companies Act, Companies House, Insolvency Service (including companies investigations), export control.

• LORD YOUNG OF NORWOOD GREEN: MINISTER FOR POSTAL AFFAIRS AND EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS
  Responsible for postal affairs: Royal Mail and Post Office Ltd, encouraging employer support for apprenticeships, student issues, employment relations, ACAS.

Notes:

1. Pat McFadden, Lord Drayson, David Lammy, Rosie Winterton, Lord Davies and Kevin Brennan are Ministers of State.
2. Stephen Timms, Ian Lucas, Shriti Vadera and Lord Young are Parliamentary Under-Secretaries of State.

Higher and Further Education Institutions should continue to operate as normal, while remaining alert to any students, staff or visitors exhibiting flu-like symptoms.

Anyone who may have flu should be advised to stay at home and call the National Pandemic flu service on 0800 1 513 100 or 0800 1 516 200 (textphone) or go to www.direct.gov.uk/pandemicflu.

All Higher and Further Education Institutions are advised urgently to review their business continuity plans to ensure they are prepared for use.

Some general guidance to help with planning and preparation is provided in the questions and answers below.

Questions and answers

• What advice should I give to staff and students?
• What should we consider in our business continuity plan?
• Who makes the decision about whether we should close or scale down our operations?
• How will we know when to take further action?
• What about students with special needs?
• What about international students?
• How should we engage with the students’ union?
• How should we prepare for the start of the new academic year in September?
• There has been some discussion in the press about schools being advised to close during a pandemic. Would Higher and Further Education Institutions be advised to close?
• What further guidance is available?
• Who should I contact if I have other questions?

What advice should I give to staff and students?

Keep staff, students and visitors informed and direct them towards general background information at www.direct.gov.uk/pandemicflu or by calling the National Flu Information line on 0800 1 513 513.

The risk of infection can be reduced significantly by ensuring good standards of personal hygiene, so remind staff, students and visitors of good hygiene practice advice at every opportunity, including:

• Washing hands frequently with soap and water to reduce the spread of virus from your hands to your face or to other people
• Covering your nose and mouth when coughing or sneezing, using a tissue when possible
• Disposing of dirty tissues promptly and carefully
• Cleaning hard surfaces (such as door handles) frequently using a normal cleaning product

The Catch it, Bin It, Kill It campaign aims to encourage good hygiene. Find out more information about Catch it, Bin It, Kill It and download/order posters.
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What should we consider in our business continuity plan?

Plans should be based on the assumption that your establishment will remain open throughout the pandemic, although you may need to scale down certain operations. You should:

• Analyse the potential impact of staff or student absenteeism on day-to-day operations
• Determine priorities and consider whether there are services that could be scaled down and/or suspended should it prove necessary
• Agree how priority activities will be maintained through the pandemic
• Ensure all role holders within the plan have appointed deputies who understand their role and responsibilities in the event of them being required
• Make sure there are up to date contact lists of names, phone numbers and addresses for all staff and students.
• Consider your policies for staff absences eg to include staff taking time off to care for a sick member of their family
• Consider how you would manage any media interest, including preparing a number of standard responses and identifying spokespersons
• Ensure you know who to contact at your local Health Protection Agency
• Review your supply chain and ensure critical suppliers on whom the institution is reliant, eg fuel, cleaning contractors, caterers, have adequate plans in place to maintain provision of service.
• Check the coverage of your insurance policies
• Consider plans for providing continuity of education

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Who makes the decision about whether we should close or scale down our operations?

Higher and Further Education Institutions should continue to make their own decisions regarding scaling down operations, with expert advice from their local Health Protection Agency services.

Such decisions are matters for vice-chancellors, principals, governors and other senior managers. You should ensure that all concerned are clear about the decision-making responsibilities and the process for keeping the institution open, reducing operations, or for implementing its closure

Institutions should plan for a range of scenarios – staying open, reducing operations, and/or closing to students during a pandemic.
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How will we know when to take further action?

Ensure a process is in place to monitor the impact of the pandemic across your institution. Consider any organisational ‘trigger points’ for further action. These will include a possible shortage of lecturing, cleaning, maintenance and security staff

As with wider Business Continuity Planning, you should also think about severe disruption to the public transport network and power cuts or other utility failures, although there is currently no suggestion that these are expected.
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What about students with special needs?

Ensure that your plans take account of the needs of students with learning difficulties. Ensure they can identify symptoms and that they are clear on the precautions that can be taken. Information for residential special schools and colleges can be found in section 2D of the DCSF guidance [PDF].
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What about international students?

You should also ensure that your plans take account of the needs of international students – both those currently at your institution and those based overseas who may have concerns about travel to the UK – providing clear information and contact points as appropriate.

Guidance on international travel advice can be found on the Foreign & Commonwealth Office and World Health Organisation websites.
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How should we engage with the students’ union?

You should involve your students’ union at all stages of the planning process, especially given its potentially substantial role in induction activities, social programmes etc. It may also be helpful to make arrangements for the students’ union to report on potential swine flu cases because its officers and staff may become aware of them first.

Students should be encouraged to consider setting up ‘flu friend schemes’, so that those who have not been affected by the virus can support those that have. This may be of particular value for students living alone with no local or family support.
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How should we prepare for the start of the new academic year in September?

Further and Higher Education Institutions are advised to include guidance on swine flu in new students’ welcome packs. This should include standard hygiene advice and the number of the National Flu Information Line (0800 1 513 513) and the National Pandemic Flu Service number (0800 1 513 100) where appropriate.

It would be useful to include an A5 copy of the NHS ‘Catch It, Bin It, Kill It’ poster. Find out more information about Catch it, Bin It, Kill It and download/order posters.

It may be useful to supply this poster to returning students as well.

New residential students should be registered with a local GP, but remember: you do not need to be registered with a GP to get treatment/Tamiflu.
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There has been some discussion in the press about schools being advised to close during a pandemic. Would Higher and Further Education Institutions be advised to close?

Due to various factors, such as hygiene, children have previously played an important role in spreading virus, during seasonal influenza as well as during a previous pandemic. In contrast, the students, staff and users of Higher and Further Education Institutions are mostly adults, who are more likely to take precautions and adjust their behaviour during a pandemic.

There is no reason to think that closing Higher and Further Education Institutions would provide any benefit. This is under constant review, however, and there may be changes if circumstances and scientific evidence change.

Further Education colleges may need to consider different arrangements for their 14-16 learners, if their schools have closed.
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What further guidance is available?

Updated guidance to Higher and Further Education Institutions on planning for a pandemic and infection control was issued in September 2009: HE and FE pandemic flu guidance

Guidance to Further Education colleges on planning for a pandemic and infection control was originally issued in 2006: Planning for a Human Influenza Pandemic: Guidance to Further Education Colleges [PDF]

Guidance on infection control was issued in 2007: Infection Control – How to Reduce the Spread of Pandemic Flu: Guidance for Further Education Colleges and Higher Education Institutions [PDF]

Details of the National Framework for pandemic flu can be found here: Pandemic flu: a national framework for responding to an influenza pandemic
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Who should I contact if I have other questions?

Officials at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills will be able to help you.

Higher Education

Henry Eliot
020 3300 8086
henry.eliot@bis.gsi.gov.uk

Lizzy Ammon
020 3300 8387
elizabeth.ammon@bis.gsi.gov.uk

Further Education

Sharon Smith
0114 259 1219
sharon.smith@bis.gsi.gov.uk

Nick Rousseau
0114 259 4285
nick.rousseau@bis.gsi.gov.uk

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A new campaign – ‘Backing Young Britain’ – uniting business and government to create thousands of opportunities for young people is launched by Yvette Cooper, Lord Mandelson, Ed Balls and John Denham today.

Launching the campaign Ministers announced £40 million to fund a new mentoring network to help young people find their feet in a tough jobs market and provide more help from day one of unemployment through job clubs and 1-2-1 support. There will also be internships and work placements for graduates and non-graduates – including 10,000 places for 18-21 year olds who haven’t been to university.

Ministers called on businesses and other organisations to make a commitment to support young people in at least one of the following ways:

• work with a partnership to bid for one of the 100,000 jobs for young people from the Future Jobs Fund;
• offer a volunteering place or a volunteer mentor for school or university leavers;
• provide work experience places to help young people learn about work, make contacts and fill their CV;
• consider a young person for a job through a work trial
• offer an internship for a graduate;
• provide an apprenticeship for 19-24 year olds
• join a Local Employment Partnership to make sure job vacancies are advertised to local unemployed people.

Kicking the campaign off today at an event with businesses and young people in London, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Yvette Cooper announced that 117 bidders have been given the green light to create up to 47,000 innovative jobs for young people and the long term unemployed through the Government’s Future Jobs Fund. Jobs will include sports coaches, tourist ambassadors, education assistants, and roles in the green and social care sectors.

Launching the campaign at the Hoxton Apprentice in London, Yvette Cooper said:

“We will not stand by and let young people get left behind in this recession. We are investing around £1 billion in getting young people and the long term unemployed jobs and opportunities to make the most of their talents and skills so they don’t get thrown onto the scrap heap.

“Today 117 organisations have been successful in their bids to create up to 47,000 jobs for young people and the long term unemployed. These opportunities will enable them to gain skills and experience and give them a helping hand onto the career ladder.

“Now we need businesses, charities and public sector bodies to work with us to harness the talent of our young people, so that we can avoid losing a generation and build a stronger future for Britain.”

In addition, Business Secretary Lord Mandelson launched a website with the details of more than 2,500 internships available to graduates from businesses up and down the country. The internships available now are the first of over 6,000 already pledged by employers and will be included on the Graduate Talent Pool site over the coming weeks.

Lord Mandelson said:

“Our national campaign to help every young person to find a job, training or work skills and experience is not just a response to the recession but an investment in our future as we build a stronger Britain.”

Ministers are today out and about around the country visiting successful organisations to see first hand the kind of jobs that will be created by the Future Jobs Fund.

Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families Ed Balls said:

“We must not repeat the mistakes that were made in recessions of the past and abandon a whole generation of young people. The Government already has schemes up and running to help school leavers, graduates and young unemployed people and we’d like businesses and charities to join in by offering schemes such as volunteering places, work experience and apprenticeships.

“For our part, the September Guarantee will guarantee all 16 and 17 year olds a place in learning, whether that’s at school, college, in training or an apprenticeship. More than 1.5 million young people – the highest number ever – will be able to stay on in education or training this year.

“We’re also expanding apprenticeships and training places, as well as places in sixth forms and colleges for a range of courses like Diplomas and A levels, with an overall investment of £6.9billion in the education and training of 16-18 year olds across the country.”

Communities Secretary John Denham said:

“In the downturn it is essential that the government’s real help with jobs and social housing reaches into the heart of the hardest hit communities, to assure people that the government understands their needs and is responding to them.

“The future jobs fund gives local and national government and their partners a huge opportunity to discuss with local people in hard hit areas how new jobs can tackle local needs and provide new opportunities for young people.”

For more information on Backing Young Britain please visit
www.hmg.gov.uk/backingyoungbritain.

Employers can access Graduate Talent Pool at: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20091007144321/http://www.bis.gov.uk/graduatetalentpool

Graduates can find out more information about Graduate Talent Pool at: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20091007144321/http://www.direct.gov.uk/graduates

There’s a terrible, lazy assumption made about modern Britain, and that is that we don’t make anything in this country anymore.

The reality is that British Manufacturing employs more people than the financial services sector. We are the sixth largest manufacturer in the world and manufacturing is one of our biggest exports.

So much for the myth therefore that manufacturing is dead in Britain.

And for that reason it’s critical for Britain’s fight back to growth and in the decades ahead, for us to back manufacturing. And to back manufacturing means backing advanced manufacturing.

Our future is in advanced manufacturing because that is where our competitive advantage lies.

There’s no denying British manufacturing has changed dramatically over the last 30 years – and it’s been difficult change, often involving painful and difficult adjustments for companies and their workforce. But what has emerged from that transformation is a world-leading 21st century manufacturing base in Britain.

We still have the residual image, or some people do, of 30 years ago: of smokestacks and factory gates. But manufacturing is not a muscle job anymore – unless you want to categorise the brain as a muscle. It is right smack at the centre of our knowledge economy – with high skilled jobs and representing 75% of British business R&D.

It is about niches and it’s about supply chains – high value supply chains, where we are more often building high-value components rather than finished consumer goods: what I’ve called ‘company clusters’ built around ecosystems of often hundreds of suppliers. This is a world where our best manufacturing companies, as I say, will be making individual components to slot into the high value end of the production market, as often as they make finished consumer products.

And above all it is about science and technology and sophisticated skills in innovation, in design and production.

At the cutting edge

Today is about the manufacturing that we do right at the cutting edge.

This is where the low carbon solutions are being found. Where new industrial platform technologies like plastic electronics, industrial bio-technologies, lightweight composite materials and silicon electronics are reshaping the way we think about certain products.

The point is that these technologies, and others like this, are transforming the production of everything from lipsticks to solar cells, to civil nuclear components and next generation vehicles.

These are areas where Britain has immense potential. We are already a leader. But we have to remain, all the time, ahead of the curve, because the competition is always catching up with us. And therefore, if we stand still, we will simply fall behind.

We also need to recognise the risks involved in trying to succeed in high-growth industries and technologies at an early stage of development. Risky expensive barriers, especially in the current economic conditions, from which in my view it is the Government’s job to help set businesses free. Our job is to take away those barriers which hold back the development of innovative and potentially high growing companies using these technologies.

So that’s where I believe there’s a clear role and responsibility for Government in making sure we have the best possible business environment and skilled workforce for advanced manufacturing.

We can’t do the work of the entrepreneurs – nor should we try. And we can’t displace the private sector. We can’t replicate markets – that’s not the job of Government. But where there are barriers holding such business back, our job is to intervene, and try to minimise or pull away those barriers to allow for that business growth to take place. And that’s the remit of this department, our new Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

Today’s package

Today, we’re launching a package of major new measures to help UK advanced manufacturers seize these new opportunities.

It comprises more than £150 million of targeted investment that will increase your access to information and support; help boost our skills base, encourage the take up of new technologies and tackle challenges faced by specific sectors such as aerospace.

It includes: £45 million from the Strategic Investment Fund to help develop low-carbon aircraft engine technology. We have a good track record, but again, there are others who are catching up and we are at risk of being overtaken; so we have to stay ahead of the game.

Not only advancing and perfecting products, but making sure products and their engineering processes form part of our transition to a low carbon economy. And for that, the Government’s low carbon industrial strategy and our wider manufacturing industrial objectives and strategy are going to underpin what Government in total can do to support that activity.

£40 million of support for the SAMULET Research and Technology Programme which will strengthen the position of UK aero-engine manufacturing and its supply chain through new technologies.

A significant expansion of the Printable Electronics Centre (PETec) in Sedgefield, creating up to 1,500 new jobs in the next 5 years. I’ve been to that Centre – it has huge potential; the foundations are great; it has a long way further to go and to expand.

And developing a Centre for Excellence in Silicon Design in the South West. Both exciting technologies with huge potential.

We’re increasing access to the services available through our highly successful Manufacturing Advisory Service to enable businesses across the industry benefit from low-carbon and other growing markets. Four companies, including the excellent high-potential growth company we visited in Cambridge this morning – and three others here now – have told me how their businesses have benefitted from the support provided by the Manufacturing Advisory Service.

I congratulate them, thank them, and now they’re going to have to do more with additional resource that we are putting in to the service.

And we’re investing £45 million of funding in Rolls-Royce to build four new Advanced Manufacturing Facilities in the UK – creating and sustaining around 800 jobs and sharpening Britain’s competitive edge in aerospace and civil nuclear global supply chains.

As the advanced manufacturing industries of the future evolve, we will be right behind them as a Government. With strategies on skills, innovation and venture capital that make sure they have the platform they need for global competition.

I was very pleased that we were able to launch the Innovation Investment Fund – seed-corn investment of £150m; over the next ten years I am confident that it will grow into a venture capital fund of £1bn in scale and size; in order to help back innovative companies that need growth capital.

I want to thank the Ministerial Advisory Group, the TSB, the Regional Development Agencies – which play an essential role in deepening our industrial strategies and activism in every part of the country – the CBI, and all of the companies involved in today’s important step forward.

Conclusion – Looking to the Future

If there are two messages that I want people to take away from today’s launch it’s this.

First, that modern British manufacturing matters to our future. I’d go further – it is indispensible for our future. Which is why I am determined that this Government should continue to play its part in putting in place the conditions for our future success.

It is vital to our balanced economic mix in this country. It is at the heart of Britain’s knowledge economy. As one of the UK’s biggest exports, advanced manufacturing can and must be key to our recovery from recession. The next generation of British entrepreneurs, scientists and engineers will be among the most important Britain has ever produced. And we must back them and invest in them now.

But the second part of my answer is, this is not a government that believes in the post-industrial economy. That’s what you get when you have an internet consultant with too much time on his hands. We are committed to creating the conditions in which British manufacturing can compete and prosper. We are not, therefore, a post-industrial economy. And that is what today is about. And today is, I hope, just the start of the development and evolution of our active industrial policies that will see Government backing where there is opportunity for that intervention to place; as long as we can be sure that, as a result of our action, real impact is the result.

So – opportunity and impact. Those will be the criteria which the Government will refer to as we develop our industrial activism. And I’m very grateful for you for coming here today to start that.

PLEASE CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY

Investment totalling £151.5 million has been announced as part of the Government’s targeted strategies for key sectors and markets. It will expand access to information, encourage take up of new technologies and address specific challenges faced by the aerospace sector.

Advanced Manufacturing describes businesses which use a high level of design or scientific skills to produce technologically complex products and processes. Because of the specialised requirements involved, these are usually goods and associated services of high value.

Read about the measures and let us know what you think on our commentable website:

http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20091007144321/http://interactive.bis.gov.uk/advancedmanufacturing

In his first major speech on higher education since taking responsibility for it under the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), Lord Mandelson today outlined his views on the essential issues facing universities ahead of an HE Framework on the future shape of the sector that he will publish later this year.

To an audience of university vice chancellors and representatives from across the HE sector, he emphasised the crucial role universities play in building a stronger UK economy and responded to some of the key challenges of social mobility raised in Alan Milburn’s report ‘Unleashing Aspiration’ on access to the professions published last week.

Ahead of an independent review on university tuition fees due later this year, Lord Mandelson said the central questions around how higher education is funded cannot be separated from the issue of access to a university education for those from poorer backgrounds.

Speaking at Birkbeck College, London, he said:

“Over the last decade we as a country have invested hugely in our universities. We have actively pursued a policy of widening access. We have put knowledge and science at the centre of our vision of our economic future, and protected its funding at unprecedented levels.

“We have instituted a fees system that has, in my view, been a radical and signal success in strengthening the resources available to universities without sacrificing accessibility to students.

“But we are obviously facing an incredibly difficult decade of rebuilding growth and future strengths in Britain. There are tough decisions ahead. Our graduates face the toughest job market for years. And ultimately those big twentieth-century higher education questions are still with us. For what end? For whom? Paid for how?”

Outlining the key role of universities on the economy, Lord Mandelson said:

“It seems to me that in defining the economic role of universities we come up with a set of linked challenges all of which are tied to the critical role of universities at the heart of a knowledge economy.

“Equipping people as rounded intellectual beings but also giving them the skills they will need in a global economy.

“Turning more of the knowledge that is generated in UK universities into jobs and growth, especially by bringing businesses and universities together to collaborate.

“These are management challenges for individual universities; but they are a strategic challenge for the UK as a whole. The diversity of mission statements and the autonomy of universities in defining precisely how they serve their students and customers is clearly vital. But there is also a need for a collective strategic vision for the sector and its role in our national economic life. That is the balance we will aim to strike in the Higher Education Framework.”

On social mobility and Alan Milburn’s report, Lord Mandelson said:

“A university education remains the gateway to the professions and a ticket to higher lifetime earnings on average. So I think we have to ask: why, for all the work in the sector and all the seriousness with which it has tackled this question are we still making only limited progress in widening access to Higher Education to young people from poorer backgrounds – especially at our most selective universities?

“We clearly need to look again at how, and how early we identify and engage potential candidates for university. I am attracted to the idea of stronger links between the professions, universities and schools – work experience, early mentoring, clearer lines of communication about what preparing for university and a career in the professions means at every stage of secondary education.

“I agree with Alan Milburn that as well as the usual criteria of standardized testing, there is a strong case for using other more contextual benchmarks for talent spotting that look at the way candidates have exploited the opportunities open to them in their lives. Some universities in the UK are using these approaches. There is good evidence that they work. And any Vice Chancellor that takes a broad and innovative approach to identifying talent will have the firm backing of the government.”

Lord Mandelson made it clear that he would not pre-empt the independent review of fees planned for launch in the autumn. He added:

“I do not believe that we can separate the issues of fees, access and student support. Any institution that wants to use greater costs to the student to fund excellence must face an equal expectation to ensure that its services remain accessible to more than just those with the ability to pay.

“Whatever funding mix for higher education we develop, there must always be a link between what an institution charges and its performance in widening access and supporting those without the ability to pay.”

Read the full speech

The transformation of higher education

For a century and a half now our universities have been reshaped by a process of profound transformation. We have seen a revolution in attitudes to science and the developing science of technology. A massive expansion in the range and focus of universities into the study and shaping of society has also taken place. And a deep and wide change in our social attitudes to higher education – what it is, and who it is for, and whether its provision is a private or a public responsibility.

The result is the fact that our universities have been the source of a huge amount of the progressive and critical thinking on government, education, social welfare and economics that has shaped twentieth century society.

A further result is the fact that while much of the innovative science and research in British life up until the latter half of the nineteenth century took place outside of our universities, a huge amount – if not most of – the best science and innovation since has taken place within them.

Another result is the gradual shift from a country in which higher education was the preserve of a small minority, at the end of adolescence, to one in which only a third of higher students are aged 18-22 and where there are more people enrolled this year in the Open University alone than in the entire university system nearly forty years ago when I was a student. And a society in which, I am glad to say, more than half of higher education students are women, when they made up only a quarter half a century ago.

We’ve gone from having a small number of institutions, with an essentially Victorian idea of what a university education was, to a Higher Education landscape that is now more diverse in its approaches and mission statements than it has ever been. This institution, Birkbeck, with its commitment to research and teaching excellence and its innovative approach to evening study is an exceptional example of this transformation that has taken place in our university sector.

These changes are a response to economic as well as social change. The development of an industrial and then a services economy in which mass literacy and numeracy are important and where technical education and specialization are increasingly required for higher paid employment.

My argument today is that these basic trends and the issues they have raised are still at the heart of higher education policy. Over the last decade we as a country have invested hugely in our universities, more than ever before. We have actively pursued a policy of widening access. We have put knowledge and science at the centre of our vision of our economic future, and protected its funding at unprecedented levels.

We have instituted a fees system that has, in my view, been a radical and signal success in strengthening the resources available to universities without sacrificing accessibility to students.

But we are obviously facing an incredibly difficult decade of rebuilding growth and future strengths in Britain following the international banking crisis and ensuing recession. There are tough decisions ahead. Our graduates face the toughest job market for years. And ultimately those big twentieth-century higher education questions are still with us. For what end? For whom? Paid for how?

Now I’m not even going to try to answer these questions comprehensively today. But they are the backdrop to the Higher Education Framework that I have decided will now be published in the Autumn rather than now.

It will be a flagship policy statement for the new department of Business, Innovation and Skills. I recognise of course that bringing university policy into a department with ‘Business’ in its title has not thrilled everyone in the university world. But it really puts universities in my view at the heart of policy on our future growth and prosperity in our country and I want to argue today that that is exactly where they should be – right at the heart of our policy making and the future of our country, our economy and society.

I want to set out some of my initial thinking on three broad arguments. I will say something about what the economic role of our universities should be in the twenty first century – and how we should understand the very idea of an ‘economic role’ for higher education.

I want to draw some explicit lines between that economic role and the social role of universities, particularly as engines of social mobility and life long learning. Here, Alan Milburn’s report of last week has framed the parameters of the debate extremely well in my view. Finally, I’m going to argue that these conclusions about social mobility have to be part of any debate about university fees in England.

For what end: the economic role of a university

I want to start by talking about the economic role of our universities. By this I mean the uniquely important role that universities play in preparing people for the world of twenty-first century work. And the extent to which we translate the knowledge minted in our universities into economic growth, which is fundamental to our prosperity. I want the universities to focus more on commercialising the fruits of their endeavour.

Before I expand on this, I need to be clear that I do not believe that the function of a university is limited to – or even primarily about – economic outcomes. They are not factories for producing workers. Defining the skills that directly underwrite many skilled jobs in the UK is not the same as defining useful and necessary knowledge. The case for a higher education system that invests in everything from classics to quantum physics is a compelling one.

I say this not just because the utility in knowledge is often impossible to predict. It is because knowledge is an end in itself. Because historical awareness and critical thinking are part of the inventory of a rounded human being.

But also because character and economic competitiveness are actually rather hard to disentangle. If the modern economy is built on specialisms, it is also built on a raft of soft skills such as intellectual confidence, logical thinking, communication and working and collaborating in teams.

I believe that these things come above all not from particular disciplines, but from the discipline of good teaching. And for me, that raises an important challenge for universities. We have become very good at developing criteria for assessing research excellence in universities, and for incentivising research excellence. We also need to look in my view for ways of incentivising excellence in academic teaching – which is not quite the same thing.

But, as I say, the modern global economy puts a premium on specialization. It is an economy of supply chains and niches. The sectors in which British firms have potential comparative advantage in the next decade – low carbon, digital communications, life science, the creative industries: these are all absolutely reliant on high levels of knowledge, of skill and innovation. They will also draw heavily on our capacity for research and our ability to commercialise it. So our universities are inescapably central to our economic future.

I am struck that we are building on very strong foundations here. Graduate employment rates and wage premia suggest we are developing highly employable people. British universities and businesses are collaborating at record levels. Increasingly they are doing this in areas beyond the well-established research-intensive sectors such as pharmaceuticals. Just last week the Royal Society published a report highlighting the value of research collaboration in the services sector.

The quality of the UK’s universities and research base has played a critical role in attracting inward investment from knowledge-intensive businesses like Microsoft and Pfizer. These companies are not here out of fellow-feeling –they are here above all for a world-class university system and a science base that is second only to that of the US in productivity.

That same level of quality has also seen us become the second biggest destination for another kind of import: overseas students, for whom the UK is now the second largest destination after the United States.

We live in a world where 2 billion people are younger than 25 and where the appetite for Anglophone education is simply immense. So this is something we value hugely and we will continue to welcome genuine international students and ensure that the country’s immigration system, and the implementation of the student tier of the points-based approach, will fully support this recruitment in future – and I have my eagle eye well trained.

We will also throw our weight behind UK universities looking to export their brands globally as the Prime Minister and I are already doing in our own foreign investment visits.

As far as producing employable people is concerned, the key is surely the relationship between universities, employers and students. Some of our biggest companies will still say they can’t find sufficient well-qualified graduates in Britain – especially in core disciplines like engineering. We need employers to communicate clearly and constructively to universities the skills they need so that courses can adapt and evolve – something that businesses have not always done effectively. Perhaps they have been shy or felt that they would not receive a hearing? We need universities to communicate to students the career trajectories from different subject choices, and the likely market demand for their skills.

But we also need to have some sense of the wider strategic picture on skills and national capabilities. Not least because public resources are finite and it is hard to justify having no collective sense of where the marginal pound in British higher education should be properly focused. That is why we tied the funding for 10000 additional students this year to the skills that the economy will need for the future, particularly science, technology, engineering and mathematics degrees.

We also need to encourage and assist universities in exploiting the intellectual property they generate to drive wider economic growth. The Innovation Investment Fund that Paul Drayson developed and that we launched as part of Building Britain’s Future will provide a huge new pool of venture capital for university spinouts. I hope that over the coming 10 years the Innovation Investment Fund will grow to £1 billion and we have already as a Government set the seeds for that growth.

But we also need to look for ways to encourage further collaboration between researchers and industry. It strikes me that one of the biggest challenges here lies not with universities, but with businesses. Especially with small firms, who simply don’t realize the resources they have down the road in the local lab.

This is why we need to keep looking for innovative ways to bring businesses and researchers together, including incentives for collaboration in the new Research Excellence Framework.

I am also keen to do some further work on the unique role of postgraduate education, which is often the point where students develop specialist skills to complement a more general undergraduate education. It is also a major export earner for the UK, and one which we have perhaps taken too much for granted. For that reason, I have decided to launch a review of postgraduate provision in Britain, led by Professor Adrian Smith, the director general of Science and Research in my department. It will draw on expertise from universities and businesses and report back in early 2010.

So, to sum up, it seems to me that in defining the economic role of universities we come up with a set of linked challenges all of which are tied to the critical role of universities at the heart of a knowledge economy.

Equipping people as rounded intellectual beings but also giving them the skills they will need in a global economy.

Turning more of the knowledge that is generated in UK universities into jobs and growth, especially by bringing businesses and universities together to collaborate even more than they do now.

These are management challenges for individual universities; but they are a strategic challenge also for the UK as a whole. The diversity of mission statements and the autonomy of universities in defining precisely how they serve their students and customers is clearly vital. But there is also a need for a collective strategic vision for the sector and its role in our national economic life. That is the balance we will aim to strike in the Higher Education Framework when we publish in the Autumn.

For whom: social mobility and lifelong learning

This picture of the economic role of higher education has some immediate and obvious implications for how we see its social role. If a university education is an entry ticket to the best paid employment and a preparation for a globalised world of work, then access to it will inevitably define the degree of social mobility that we’re able to achieve in Britain.

We are doing better, but not well enough. I am impatient about this progress and intend to turn up the spotlight on university admissions.

Alan Milburn’s report was a milestone. As he set out, this is a much bigger issue than just higher education. It has implications for parental attitudes and the whole education system, especially the journey towards or away from university that begins in the early teens, or indeed even earlier than that.

In thirteen years as MP for Hartlepool I saw first hand the damage that can be done by low expectations and by barriers to social mobility. I have always believed that a fair Britain is one in which the daughter of a Hartlepool shopkeeper has the same shot at being a High Court Judge as the son of a Surrey stockbroker.

Now of course it is true that university education is not the only way to prepare successfully for modern economic life. Indeed I believe that one of the great challenges for this government is now further defining and promoting different pathways into non-graduate careers, building on our strengths in further education and developing adult skills. We now have quarter of a million apprentices in this country – five times more than we did a decade ago when this Government started out – which opens up the potential to develop over time a whole new offer to young British people for professional development.

Nevertheless, a university education remains the gateway to the professions and a ticket to higher lifetime earnings on average. So I think we have to ask: why, for all the work in the sector and all the seriousness with which it has tackled this question are we still making only limited progress in widening access to Higher Education to young people from poorer backgrounds – especially at our most selective universities?

We clearly need to look again at how, and how early we identify and engage potential candidates for university. I am attracted to the idea of stronger links between the professions, universities and schools – work experience, early mentoring, clearer lines of communication about what preparing for university and a career in the professions means at every stage of secondary education.

And I agree with Alan that as well as the usual criteria of standardized testing, there is a strong case for using other more contextual benchmarks for talent spotting that look at the way candidates have exploited the opportunities open to them in their lives. Some universities in the UK are using such approaches already. There is good evidence that they work. And any Vice Chancellor that takes a broad and innovative approach to identifying talent will have the firm backing of the government and of me.

I also think we need to ask whether the higher education system adequately supports mature students and part timers. I think we have taken huge steps in all these areas – not least in the pathbreaking model of the Open University and here at Birkbeck, which openly positions itself as “London’s evening university”.

But we need to be that serious about adult skills and life-long higher and further education, for a number of simple reasons. First: almost half of British university students are already mature students. Second, most of the future British workforce of the 2020s is already in their twenties or older, and it is their skills that will determine our economic capabilities at that critical point. Third, the demographics of an ageing population mean that even with an influx of foreign students, the student market is going to get progressively older, and demand will reflect that.

There is clearly a place for the conventional, campus-based, full time, away-from-home model of study leading to a final degree – to state the obvious. But we need to keep encouraging the alternatives that are springing up: two-year honours degrees, part time modular degrees, modular programmes that don’t have to lead to a full degree.

These are controversial issues and they evoke passionate views. But they need reasoned debate and I don’t shy away from that. My provisional conclusion, suggested by the ideas I have just floated, is that we need to do more in these directions.

Rightly, we have invested heavily in excellence in British universities. We have an obligation to ensure that the chance to benefit from that excellence is determined by natural talent rather than social background. We also need to ensure that higher education can be an integral part of a whole working life, not just its antechamber.

Paid for how: funding and access

Which brings me to my final point, which is about funding. Bluntly put: excellence is not cheap. When this Government came to office, we faced the challenge of maintaining a world class university sector, with higher participation rates. And I was in the Cabinet Office at the start of the Government’s term and I

remember sitting in meetings as we took on the funding gap in the order of many millions of pounds, which was accompanied by debate from all sides. We now face the same challenge with inevitable pressure on public resources. We cannot duck the issue: everything we want to achieve in higher education depends on a solid, sustainable system of funding for higher education.

Part of the solution must be widening the sources of funding universities can draw on. This might be a more professional and confident approach to seeking endowments and donations. It can be growing income from research collaboration with industry or even government. It can be marketing a university brand around the world. Universities are doing more of all of these and I welcome and encourage that. But they alone do not represent a sustainable funding model for the sector as a whole.

Inevitably we are going to come back to the balance of state and user funding. And this raises the issue of fees, and their role in paying for world class institutions. I have no intention of pre-empting the independent fees review that we will launch in the Autumn on this question. But I would make a simple point that follows from everything I have just said.

I do not believe that we can separate the issues of fees, access and student support. Any institution that wants to use greater costs to the student to fund excellence must face an equal expectation to ensure that its services remain accessible to more than just those with the ability to pay.

There is a lively debate in this country on how we should fund higher education and I welcome that debate and I am going to nurture it. It is time for that debate to reach some absolutely hard and fast conclusions. But whatever funding mix for higher education we develop, there must always be a link between what an institution charges and its performance in widening access and supporting those without the ability to pay.

Conclusion: higher education in modern life

I realize that this is an audience probably used to sitting through overlong lectures, but I have no intention of pushing my luck, so let me sum up. I’ve sketched out what I think are some of the biggest issues that I want to tackle in setting the direction of higher education in our new framework in the Autumn. I haven’t been exhaustive this morning and I’ve asked more questions than I have answered, but that was partly the point because you are going to have to help me and the Government find these answers. We won’t find them alone.

However, I think I’ve made it clear what sort of Universities Secretary I am and where I am coming from. I’ve argued that in a modern economy and society universities are a social trust. They have three great roles: passing on existing knowledge, generating new knowledge, and helping ensure that new knowledge underwrites our collective prosperity wherever possible. I believe that the way we enable and equip our universities to do these things will say more about how we understand the unique challenges of prospering in a globalised economy and culture at the start of the third millennium than almost anything else a government can do.

I’ve argued that there is no tension between a more strategic view of Britain’s universities as critical to our knowledge economy and our future economic growth and their essential autonomy or their cultural and civilisational role. That is fundamental to my entire approach to policy in respect of universities. The man in Whitehall – and increasingly the woman – does not know best how to run a university.

Far from the gross caricature of academic insularity, I have been incredibly struck, since my appointment, by the massive appetite in the sector for what I can only call ‘relevance’ to our economic and social challenges in a globalised economy. I have yet to find a Vice-Chancellor in an ivory tower in respect of dealing with these economic challenges – maybe by the chance I have covered the length and breadth of the country I will, but not so far. I’ve been asked many times by university leaders with respect to the economy: ‘how can universities help?” For that reason, I believe the logical home for university policy is in a new department whose core remit is investing in economic growth, investing in our future. Building our national strengths in knowledge and innovation. These are also the remits of a modern university.

However, I’ve argued that we are at risk – as are all countries that aspire to excellence in their higher education sector – of failing properly to exploit the role of university education as a means of social mobility.

I think that the historic anti-elitism of some parts of the left on education policy has often been a dead end because it has confused excellence and privilege. Those two things are not the same. But the only way to square that circle is a higher education system that widens access and increases social mobility even as it fosters excellence. It is not enough for universities simply to confer life advantages from one generation of professionals to their children. Everyone should be able to aspire to those advantages – on the basis of merit, not the lottery of birth.

Finally, I argued that we cannot separate these issues from the question of how higher education is funded in England. We have to face up to the challenge of paying for excellence. But whatever the outcome of the fees review, our expectations of institutions in widening access and supporting poorer students must advance in lockstep. The path to an equal opportunity Britain must run through all our universities.

I started by suggesting the last hundred and fifty years have seen a revolution in British universities. I’ll finish by saying that it seems to me that this has been an undeniably progressive revolution.

It has embedded science in our national intellectual culture and widened access to knowledge, education and critical thinking to a degree that is hard to exaggerate. It has fundamentally reshaped our liberal arts culture and our democracy. It has underwritten the creation of new industries and better jobs for literally millions of people and played a crucial role in equipping British people to prosper in a globalised economy and culture.

However, for us as a country it is also an unfinished revolution. And in that fact, for us, lies both the challenge and also the huge opportunity.

Lord Drayson, Minister for Science and Innovation, will formally kick off the consultation at the London launch of a new European Space Agency (ESA) facility at Harwell, on Wednesday 22 July. The consultation will seek views on whether the current organisation which oversees space in the UK, the British National Space Centre (BNSC), is the best funding structure to meet the challenges of the future and deliver the greatest benefit to the country.

Read the consultation document here

The BNSC has helped the UK to build a hugely successful sector which is second only to the USA in space science, contributes £6.5bn a year to the UK economy and supports 68,000 jobs.

However, as the world becomes increasingly dependent on advances in space science and in order to safeguard the UK’s “critical mass” of skills and expertise, today’s consultation is seeking views on the appetite for a single agency to better co-ordinate the UK’s civil space strategy.

The Minister for Science and Innovation, Lord Drayson said:

“Space is so important to our future. The UK space industry has thrived under the BNSC, but the Apollo 11 anniversary demonstrates the need for ambition, purpose and a clear sense of commitment.

“We now have to look ahead to the next 40 years. I want this consultation to be inspired and influenced by this idea. So we can provide the best support to our world-leading space sector. So it can continue to flourish and when the economic growth takes hold, make an even bigger impact on the UK economy and our lives.”

A thriving space sector will play an important role in building Britain’s future and the recession busting trends of the space industry is a testament to the nature of business that will generate the jobs of the future.

Space is a key part of the global communications network, driving globalisation and providing new business opportunities. The UK’s leading satellite infrastructure will also support sustainable development, help protect our oceans and fisheries, and allow us to predict and help when natural disasters strike throughout the world.

Britons benefit from space technology every day – often without realising it.

Some advances are obvious, such as satellite communications, television broadcasting. Mobile networks and accurate GPS equipment in cars. Others are more obscure, such as timing networks underpinning telephone and power grids.

Space applications can provide solutions for developing policy and providing services, for example, the Digital Britain initiative which will use satellites to achieve its goal of total UK broadband coverage by 2012.

The 12-week consultation starts on the day the European Space Agency (ESA) lands in Harwell, Oxfordshire – opening its first facility in the UK.

The ESA facility will focus on three areas – adapting space data and images to create new everyday applications; climate change modelling that uses space data; and developing technologies such as novel power sources and innovative robotics which could be used to explore the Moon and Mars.

Through the new ESA facility and the International Space Innovation Centre which will be created in Harwell, the UK will maximise its world-leading strengths in these areas and enable our space industry to win a larger share of the global market in space systems, services and applications.

The Government also recently announced the Space Innovation and Growth Team which offers a huge opportunity for the government to work alongside industry to define a clear plan – a 20 year vision – and come up with a strategy for the future growth of the UK space industry.

The Minister for Science and Innovation, Lord Drayson, added:

“Britain is undergoing a space renaissance. We must build on this to strengthen our outstandingly successful space programme. I hope this consultation will help us establish the infrastructure we need to take UK space into a new age.”

Read the consultation document here

As part of those talks he will update them on discussions that the Government has been having with all the parties involved and reiterate the Government’s commitment to continued Vauxhall production in the UK.

Lord Mandelson said:

“We are determined to continue out detailed discussions with RHJI, Magna and other interested parties to secure a long term commercial future for Vauxhall.

“I and my officials are in constant contact with the US and German governments and GM and others to ensure Britain’s interests are fully represented.

“As one of GMEs most efficient plants, Ellesmere Port produces one of the UK’s favourite cars, the Vauxhall Astra and I hope one day the Ampera.

“Vauxhall is an excellent and very popular UK brand. Continued Vauxhall production remains a top priority for this government.”

The projects are the first ‘Early Bird’ bids to receive funding under the Government’s £20m Transformation Fund to support informal adult learning – learning for pleasure, self-development and community development.

Each project has been allocated a share of £1m by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS). The projects will introduce a range of innovative adult learning initiatives and activities for the benefit of a diverse range of communities and individuals.

The Transformation Fund delivers on commitments made in The Learning Revolution White Paper, published earlier this year, which announced a new approach to improving people’s lives and prosperity though learning for pleasure.

Kevin Brennan, Minister for Further Education, Skills and Consumer Affairs, said:

“These new projects will help to transform the way adults engage with learning – be it through music, creative writing, or parent groups – at the same time as promoting new partnerships in local communities.

“Learning for pleasure is hugely important – contributing to health, building confidence and improving community cohesion. In the longer term, informal learning can also act as a stepping stone towards more formal qualifications and employment.”

BIS has also announced today that the National Institute for Adult Continuing Education (NIACE) has won the tender to manage the Transformation Fund and oversee the distribution of the remaining £19million grant fund.

Alan Tuckett, Chief Executive of NIACE, said:

“NIACE is proud to have the role of supporting the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills managing the Transformation Fund. We argued in our response to the Informal Learning Consultation that there is no better stimulus for local adult learning providers than the creation of a fund to trigger innovation and new partnerships.

“There’s already evidence from the ‘early bird’ bids of how creative and imaginative community-based adult learning can be when it’s given the opportunity for blue-skies thinking and the money to put those ideas into practice.”

The Transformation Fund was set up to encourage new partnerships between public, private and community organisations and create informal learning activities which:

• encourage more and different people into informal learning, particularly people from disadvantaged groups;
• open up access to learning in new places, in new ways and at more flexible times;
  support people to set up self-organised groups and learning clubs;
• widen choice, by developing and sharing innovative content;
• build partnerships and strengthen the capacity of informal adult learning organisations;
• improve connections and progression between different kinds of learning; and
  make better use of broadcasting and technology to stimulate and support learning.

The fund, available in 2009-10, adds to the £210m which the Government has already ring-fenced to support informal adult learning. The Government also invests £360m each year in museums and galleries, £10m in UK online centres in libraries and other community settings and £21.5m in union learning.

The Transformation Fund delivers on a pledge made in the Government’s The Learning Revolution White Paper, published in March 2009, which describes how Government and a multitude of partner organisations can work together to create a new movement for informal learning.