Commenting on Rishi Sunak's appointment as Prime Minister techUK CEO Julian David welcomes the new Prime Minister and points to the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead for the new Government.
Article by Julian David, techUK CEO
The UK faces a difficult economic outlook created by the after-effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia's war in Ukraine. Despite the usual buoyancy of the UK tech sector the negative economic headwinds of 2022 have knocked confidence. Our most recent survey of our members shows that over one third of members believe their outlook will worsen over the next 12 months and that tech businesses will particularly struggle when trying to hire new talent and fulfil their existing plans to invest in the UK.
The new Prime Minister shares our belief in the role that the UK tech sector can play to drive economic growth, not only from success among our own companies, but from the positive spill-overs tech creates across the British economy. In the past, the tech sector and the Prime Minister have worked closely together to ensure the sector delivers this, weathering the storm of COVID-19 with the creation of the Future Fund, Help to Grow and the Kickstarter scheme making a big impact.
As we confront this latest set of economic challenges techUK and our members stand ready to work with with the Government to help mitigate the impacts of the economic situation and chart a path to sustainable growth.
In our latest survey our members indicated where the Government could take steps to rebuild the confidence of the tech sector, increase investment, and boost growth. Our members have urged the following to be at the top of the new Government's agenda:
- Finally grasping the nettle that is the UK's digital skills and business investment crisis by focusing on incentives for businesses to invest in people, capital and ideas. This will involve a radical shake-up on how we approach apprenticeships, T-levels and in-work retraining as well as reviews of how we incentivise capital investment and innovation in our knowledge-based sectors.
- Delivering supply side reforms and Project Gigabit to rollout digital infrastructure; such as full fibre, 5G and next generation networks and,
- Remove regulatory uncertainty by working with the tech sector to deliver at pace the Online Safety Bill, Data Protection and Digital Information Bill and set out legislation for a new pro-competition regime for digital markets in a way that achieves the Government's aims but ensures a good regulatory framework for British tech businesses.
However beyond these immediate actions to drive growth we must also seek to determine how the UK can secure our place in a more uncertain and economically competitive world where leadership in science and technology is of strategic importance.
This will require the Government to continue the work to reform financial markets and the UK's approach to investment to drive funding into UK tech scale-ups, maintain commitments to invest in research and development and ensure our future of compute, artificial intelligence and quantum strategies can nurture the industries of the future here in the UK.
Achieving these things will not be easy, however if we can unlock and spread the benefits of digital technology the we can make significant progress boosting our economy by 41.5bn and creating as many as 678,000 jobs by 2025.
Further, the spill-overs of these actions will reap benefits elsewhere, helping us meet our net zero goals through green-tech, levelling-up the UK and providing the basis for innovation in our public services across the NHS, transport and education.
techUK and our members will be working closely with the Prime Minister and his Government in the weeks and months ahead to take on the challenges the country faces and ensure that we play a role in building a better future for people, society, the economy and the planet.