A puzzle for the beach

As August approaches, traditionally the holiday month where silly ideas and wars get launched, some politicians are again talking of 'taking a chainsaw to the state.' While hard-pressed businesses may welcome any idea that might lighten the tax burden, it’s worth pondering what type of smaller state might work well for business and the country as a whole.

Just pruning staff numbers is unlikely to make the state better at procurement, smarter at introducing new technologies, more successful at managing big projects or quicker to cut costs. These skills are vital to a successful economy and the companies in that economy. So, what the UK now needs is a nimble entrepreneurial state that can work confidently with businesses to exploit the opportunities of a radically changing world. Speed is of the essence to take advantage of new trade opportunities and new technologies and satisfy a UK electorate impatient to see improvements in how the economy works for them. Therefore, the puzzle for the beach is 'how do we get there?'

Some steps to start the process might be:

• Appoint a UK marketing champion to promote the country and counter-balance Treasury caution about new initiatives with long-term potential.
• Set up an 'Office of Strategic Opportunities' to work with the Department for Business and Trade, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office to identify ways to quickly raise income, cut costs, and improve efficiency across government. Staff could be drawn from the public and private sectors to work on cross-departmental projects.
• Adopt a new approach to valuing long term projects that would enable their costs to be balanced by their asset values on a continuous basis.
• Copy South Korea with their focus on digital infrastructure, and Germany with their focus on small and medium-sized businesses.

Unlike the Brexit project, such measures do not require armies of bureaucrats and could help liberate the Civil Service to be creative. We would welcome thoughts on these, or hopefully better ideas.

Our next meetings are on using pension funds for infrastructure investment, the Middle East situation, and addressing the housing shortage.