If you really want growth Ms Truss: 5 really good ideas!

I’ve been thinking about this post for a couple of weeks now (since Liz Truss’ dreadful ‘growth, growth, growth’ speech at the Conservative Party Conference) and only wrote it last night. With the events of today (Kwasi Kauteng being sacked) it may be redundant or may be even more valid. Whatever. If you really want growth, and good quality growth at that, maybe Ms Truss should be considering the following.

Give children the best start in life

I remember from my time chairing the Health Committee at Cambridgeshire County Council seeing the dreadful stats that show that children’s life chances get locked in pretty early on. If you don’t improve this the country is always going to have a workforce which is ill equipped to succeed in the job market of the future. If you really want the UK to morph into a high wage, high skills economy then make sure that its children get decent pre-school and primary education.

Take the pressure off the NHS

Back to the Health Committee again and we had the budget for Public Health which, inter alia, funds programs to improve the health of society: reducing smoking, improving physical activity, providing dietary advice etc. The logic is that if people lead healthy life styles they are less of a burden on the NHS and given it’s challenges today that must be a good thing. But what did the government do in 2016? It halved the public health budget because it was an easy one to target to save a little money. If you want to save the NHS, and keep the nation healthy and productive, invest in Public Health!

Stop subsidising low paying companies

Most, maybe, of the country’s welfare spend goes to people who are in work but are getting low wages. That means the people’s taxes subsidise low paying companies. Such companies do this because they can and it’s easy. The alternative is more difficult because it involves being more effective in how human resources are used and that probably means investment and training. If there were no alternative they’d have to do it and that would be another step along the road to a high wage, high skills economy.

Fix the obvious now

It’s a bit Keynesian I know but why not spend aggressively and do so on stuff that needs it. Start with schools (see above) and hospitals. There’s surely no excuse for allowing such infrastructure to deteriorate.

Join the single market

Ironically this would give the quickest, biggest and most certain boost to growth. Most people want this to happen now so as U-turns go it’s get lots of popular support. And it just might be a first step back to securing all those other benefits which we lost with Brexit like scientific collaboration, simple passport checks and low cost roaming. The list is much longer but you get the gist.

The point is that growth itself should not be the ambition. It’s got to be the right sort of growth and not one that meets the criterion but just delivers all of the benefits to a limited few. Good growth benefits everyone and that’s what’s needed.