THIRTEENTH REPORT
The Trade and Industry Committee has agreed to
the following Report:—
ENTERPRISE POLICY IN THE REGIONS
I. INTRODUCTION
1. Over the lifetime of this Parliament, we have
followed a number of strands of the Government's enterprise policy,
from our recommendation in 1997 that Regional Selective Assistance
needed to be reviewed and modernised[1]
to our Report earlier this year on the Department of Trade
and Industry: Role, Objectives and Targets.[2]
There have been a number of white papers, policy announcements,
initiatives, programmes and projects. From London, we find it
difficult to assess what is really happening at local level as
a result of all this activity. DTI Ministers and officials must
feel the same. The last few years have also seen changes in the
political and administrative landscape:
- The introduction of Regional Development Agencies
(RDAs), with increasing influence and expenditure, and some Regional
Assemblies;
- The introduction of the Small Business Service
and the re-invention of Business Links;
- The replacement of Training and Enterprise Councils
with Learning and Skills Councils;
- The reshaping of regional Government Offices.
2. We therefore decided in late 2000 to undertake
at least a preliminary inquiry into the regional and local impact
of DTI enterprise initiatives, looking in particular at programmes
for which DTI is primarily responsible, and the enterprise role
of RDAs. Since then, plans have been announced for RDAs to be
given more funds for enterprise promotion, and more freedom to
spend them. During our discussions we realised it would be useful
to hear formal oral evidence from the Small Business Service (SBS).
We think in future an annual evidence session with the SBS would
be useful to our successor Committees.
3. We visited the South West of England on 29-30
January 2001, the North East on 27-28 February and the East Midlands
on 5 March. In each region we held meetings with the Government
Office, the Regional Development Agency and a variety of other
organisations and companies, including local universities. In
order to gain a comparative insight into the very different structure
of economic development agencies in Scotland, on 23-24 April we
visited Glasgow, Stirling and Edinburgh for meetings with Scottish
Enterprise, the local enterprise company in Forth Valley, our
sister Committee in the Scottish Parliament and university representatives
at Glasgow and Heriot-Watt. We are very grateful to all the people
we met and who provided us with information during these visits.
On 2 May we took oral evidence from David Irwin, Chief Executive
of the Small Business Service, Peter Waller, Deputy Chief Executive
and Hâf Merrifield, Director of Local Network Development.
We thank all those who provided evidence. We do not intend
to make recommendations in this preliminary Report, nor do we
expect a Government Response. Our prime purpose in this Report
is to record some of our impressions and to identify issues to
which those engaged in the area may wish to react to and which
our successors may wish to pursue in the next Parliament.
1 Co-ordination of Inward Investment,
First Report, Session 1997-98, HC 355, (hereafter HC 355), para
44. Back
2 The
Department of Trade and Industry: Role, Objectives and Targets,
Second Report, Session 2000-01, HC 140 (hereafter HC 140); Government
Observations on the First and Second Reports from the Trade and
Industry Committee (Session 2000-01) on the work of the Committee
in the 1997 Parliament and the Department of Trade and Industry:
Role, Objectives and Targets, Third Special Report, Session
2000-01, HC 407 Back
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