Name: Business, Innovation, Science and Trade Committee
Uploaded: 2026-10-20T13:32:50+00:00
Duration: 7885 s

00:02 - 00:56

Speaker 3

Order, order. Welcome to today's session when I'm delighted that we're able to welcome Secretary of State to the committee along with Amanda Brooks. Thank you very much indeed for joining us this afternoon. We are about to kick off our work plan for 2027 with our big business conference in the House of Commons on Monday followed by a national road trip and a big nationwide survey to understand exactly what it is that the business, trade union and consumer associations want us to have a look at over the course of 2027. So we're very pleased to be able to kick off that process by asking you about your priorities.

Welcome back to the best job in government. Welcome back to the best committee in Parliament. You've been out for a bit. You've come back to a department that covers most of the domestic economy. Give us a sense of the kind of vision and priorities that you've brought back to the department.

00:56 - 02:56

Speaker 4

Yeah, well thanks Chair and it's lovely to be with you colleagues as well as being two of the last few business secretaries. I was a member of this committee as well you might remember in a previous guise and thank you for that work you're kicking off which I do think is really important. I think this is the best job in government. I think the role of this select committee is really important Chair within that. I think it's maybe worth just pausing for a second to to comment on the fact it is a genuinely new department.

I know obviously having done the DBT job before people might see it in that way but this is something new. I think for people who are aficionados of how we structure the business department in the UK in recent years, you know, I think the fact we have now a department of eight and a half thousand people, annual budget of 17 billion pounds, circa 17 billion pounds a year. This is a real significant change in terms of the strength of these issues within government and it's obviously a privilege to come back to be in charge of them. We do cover a lot and I would say to give you our four public objectives and I haven't spoken of these before, I'm revealing them to the committee in the proper way. The first I would say Chair is to lead on place-based reindustrialisation using the industrial strategy as the mechanism for that.

The second I would say is how we make sure we have better lives and vibrant local economies that markets work for citizens. So that's everything from our work on making work pay to our SME policy to how competition law works in the UK and all the rest of the things the department does. The third I would say and again a reference to the new department structure here is that science, innovation, technology have got to be at the heart of growth and we have to embrace technology to do that. And the fourth I would say we've always had you might remember a commitment to an open, connected, trading economy. I would add the words secure and resilient to that as well reflecting I think the world that we are in.

02:56 - 03:02

Speaker 1

So there's a lot of things Chair but I think you've got to put it down into those four headings for the fundamental objectives of this department.

03:02 - 03:14

Speaker 2

And you've obviously managed to join and restructure the department just ahead of the budget. You'll know that business is screaming about the cost of doing business. What have you asked the Chancellor to prioritise?

03:14 - 04:06

Speaker 4

I'm not going to shock you all by telling you what may or may not be in the budget or what I would want to be in. But I I would say look Chair at the the public comments that you've just referenced of the Chancellor, the reference to the cost of doing business, the need for breathing space for business. I endorse those words entirely.

I think there's got to be acknowledgement that there is no answer to all of the things we as parliamentarians, all the things our constituents want to see as priorities for the state and for the government unless we have a strong economy, a stronger economy than we've had in actually quite a few years since the financial crisis. And I think the last set of GDP figures are very encouraging, but it's sustained economic growth that will do that. So there's got to be a reflection that business is the only way to do that. And I think what the Chancellor has said has been significant in that.

04:06 - 04:12

Speaker 5

Does that mean we're going to see help to reduce energy costs for business?