Launch of Enterprising Britain 2008
Baroness Shriti Vadera, Minister for Economic Competitiveness and Small Business (jointly with Cabinet Office)
Bridge Centre, Stoke on Trent, 18 February 2008
I’m delighted to be given this chance to celebrate success. And to congratulate James and all of you for putting the North Staffordshire Regeneration Zone on the enterprise map.
In many ways North Staffordshire epitomises both, the challenges that Britain faces from globalisation, and the underlying strengths that will help us compete and succeed as an economy.
In the last 30 years, the local economy has undergone deep structural change.
But the underlying strengths that first created the industries that made this area prosperous, remain. The talent that underpinned the famous brands from this area is the same talent that helped to set up the regeneration zone and create more than 1,000 new jobs and 500 new businesses.
And the best signal of the future are the entrepreneurs of tomorrow. 21 sustainable social enterprises in North Staffordshire schools are now run by students. The model you have created for engaging with young people is an example for all parts of the country to emulate.
In different ways, the rest of the country faces the challenges that North Staffordshire has faced up to. Technology makes an increasing proportion of the components of goods and services open to competition. So there is no place to hide.
1 million manufacturing jobs and hundreds of thousands of service jobs are now moving from the us and Europe to Asia every year.
So today for Britain to succeed, what matters is not who has the coal, oil, infrastructure or commodities. What matters is who has the ideas, and can exploit them; who has creativity, and the skill to put it to use; who has the spirit of entrepreneurship. And can take the risks to harness that spirit.
When I left London this morning the talk was all about Northern Rock. It is a testing time for our economy and the global economy. But Mervyn King was right when he said last week, when you get out of London, “The mood music is very different”. I felt that this morning when I opened the enterprise units at Port Vale Football Club.
North Staffordshire is a great example of what can be achieved with the partnership between public, private and voluntary sectors.
For those of us in the public sector our job is to make the UK the single best place in the World to start and grow businesses.
We are already amongst one of the best. We have a record number - 4.5 million businesses registered in 2006 – 700,000 more than in 2000.
We have the lowest barriers to entrepreneurship of any OECD countries. The World Bank consistently ranks us in the top ten places to do business globally.
We know more and more people want to start a business and more people believe they have the skills to start one. The proportion of working age population expecting to start a business in the next 3 years has increased by 70 per cent.
SMEs are the the lifeblood of the economy and contribute as much as large companies to UK output and employ more people. Their productivity growth is greater than large firms.
But, there is absolutely no room for complacency. There are challenges we must overcome. Indeed many would say we have an enterprise gap.
A gap relative to the U.S. – the most entrepreneurial country in the world. 10% of their labour force is involved in a relatively new business compare to 6% here.
A growth gap – less thank half of UK businesses report that they intend to grow in the coming two to three years.
An equality gap – self – employment rates between the most and least deprived wards, are 6 per cent and 10 percent respectively. Only 17 per cent of enterprises are women-led.
A skills gap – of today’s 6 million unskilled workers in Britain, we will soon need only half a million.
Our job is to help close these gaps. To listen to business and young and old people who want to start or grow businesses. To hear them when they say, they want less red tape, they want simple easy to access business support, they want to go to one place and get the advice they need, they want the market failures in finance filled.
We cannot do this from Whitehall. We need you, regional and local partners, to work with your businesses.
In the week of the budget we will publish the government’s new enterprise strategy to ensure that our enterprise policies are fit for purpose. To make sure you – the regional partners – have the right framework in place to support enterprise and drive results on the ground.
If we could replicate the turn-around in fortunes of this area across the UK, the benefits to the economy and our communities could be enormous.
This is the century where we are up against competition from over two billion people in China and India. No country can afford to waste the talents of anyone. Today the only natural resource we have is people.
Indeed I believe the key to the enterprise renaissance we seek is a cultural change that starts in our schools and stretches right through out communities from classroom to boardroom.
John Stuart Mill defined enterprise as – and I quote ‘The desire to keep moving… to be trying and accomplishing new things for our own benefit or that of others.’
I cannot think of a better way of describing enterprising Britain. I would like to wish you all well with the competition in 2008.
Thank You.