Croydon
UKIP's way out of the recession
Tuesday, 12th January 2010
Vote for… Industry, Enterprise & Jobs!
A plan to restore this country to economic prosperity, written by Professor Stephen Bush in conjunction with other members of UKIP. This plan is currently under consideration for adoption as UKIP policy. A brief summary of this plan is given below.
For the past decade, our economy has been a huge confidence trick acquiesced in by all the House of Commons parties, a mirage of “growth” based on:
• A near tripling of mortgage and personal debt, and an international trade deficit of around £60 billion p.a. (£1,000 per year for every man, woman and child).
• Almost one million more public sector jobs funded by government borrowing which the taxpayer now has to pay for.
• Around 2 million immigrants filling mainly low paid jobs, while a million skilled jobs have been lost from manufacturing.
• A banking system morally and, in part actually, bankrupt.
This has resulted in:
• Government borrowing estimated to total about £700 billion between 2009 and 2014, more than £2,000 per year for every man, woman and child.
• The UK's international investment position, in 12 years of Labour rule, going from being in balance to a deficit of over £200 billion, by far the largest in our history.
UKIP rejects totally the notion that our country (or any major country) can earn its living in the world by financial manipulation, wind power, and vague talk of a post-industrial society based almost entirely on services such as media and tourism, important as these may be in their own right.
70% of the world’s trade is in goods and with the rise of Brazil, China and India will remain so. Failure to produce enough saleable goods, and the after-sales, legal and financial services allied to them, will condemn our people to a low-tech, low wage future at the beck and call of foreign companies and governments.
The evidence is, however, that while most British manufacture is internationally competitive in its existing markets – it has only about two-thirds of the size and market range needed to support a robust economy in broad trading balance with the rest of the world.
Accordingly UKIP’s policies are directed at expanding manufacture through long-term programmes to provide stable domestic markets, coupled with major targeted assistance for export markets.
In particular, UKIP would:
• Provide investment grants and tax allowances to help expand manufacturing by 50% over 10 years, creating around one million new skilled jobs and virtually eliminating our trade deficit.
• Establish a national network of combined design, prototyping, and marketing (LEOPARD ) centres, which would partner small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in their endeavours to enter domestic and export markets from which they are currently excluded.
This policy recognises that most SMEs are too small on their own to accumulate the research and design know-how and the market intelligence to expand into new markets, especially overseas. The new centres will be staffed with professional marketing managers and design engineers and become, over time, massive and unique repositories of know-how and expertise. They will receive most of the funding currently provided to SMEs via the Regional Development Agencies and the Department for Business, and also the £1.5 billion of tax allowances currently provided to mainly large industrial firms by the Treasury.
• Provide a Training and Education Voucher for everyone at 18, to be used to help pay for accredited education or training courses at any time of life.
The government currently spends about £10 billion per year in support of further and higher education. UKIP believes that large numbers of the 18 year-old age group going to university take courses with only a vague connection either to the jobs market or to recognisably academic fields. This is a major economic inefficiency, as well as an injustice to those 55+% of the age group who do not receive 3-year grants at public expense.
The new vouchers would replace existing college and student grants at 4 cash levels dependent on the course signed up to. They would be used to pay for any accredited course, for a maximum of three years full-time or longer part-time if connected to a job or recognised profession. All will thus benefit at stages in their lives where both the job opportunities and their own motivation are clear.
• Abolish EU and PC labour regulations which hamper business, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, by in particular restoring the compensation limits on unfair dismissal and discrimination claims, and reducing their scope. UKIP would also repeal Labour's laws which require private companies and organisations in the public sector actively to promote "diversity" programmes. These create injustice and inefficiency at the same time.
• Promote fair reward systems which are necessary for the efficient functioning of all firms. In particular, UKIP would encourage all companies, through the tax system, to replace bonuses for the few by a salary-related profit-sharing scheme for all employees with more than a year's service.
LONG-TERM PROGRAMMES
The single biggest obstacle to firms seeking to expand is uncertainty about the market for their products. This is particularly the case for manufacturers of complex products where the lead times can be 10 years from concept to sales but it also applies to construction, mining and indeed farming.
UKIP's set of Long Term Programmes (LTPs) are conceived both to answer urgent national needs and to provide just the element of long-term certainty which will enable participating companies to invest in the necessary equipment and staff training with the confidence that their efforts will not be wasted. They will also provide markets for the LEOPARD centres and their partner companies.
The first five of the proposed LTPs are as follows:
• A 10 year programme of re-equipment for our Armed Services.
• A 25 year programme of nuclear power construction to provide approximately two-thirds of our future electricity needs, thus guaranteeing energy security for our people at a much lower realistic carbon usage and cost than any of the vague "programmes" being promoted by the other UK parties and the EU.
• A 30 year programme of upgrading our flood defences along at-risk inland rivers and building major new sea defences along our East coast.
• An integrated nation-wide system of road and rail freight links to provide the most environmentally friendly means of transporting goods around the country, to and from the ports
.
• A programme of public building works using latest off-site manufacture techniques from the UK factories involved. Offsite manufacture not only offers the best weather-independent means of construction in this country, with all that that implies for meeting deadlines and budgets in public procurement, but it will also access major new markets overseas where these products are much in demand.
We believe that these policies represent a complete break with the disastrous economic orthodoxies of the last 20 years or so and as such will commend themselves to large numbers of the British people.
This paper is a summary of the 32 page paper "Produce and Prosper" version 11 written by Stephen Bush on the basis of the contributions listed there.
