Economical Misconceptions

Once again Martin Francis appears to be misrepresenting Brent Labour Party, this time on economic policy.  You can see Martin's views here.  Lets not worry about whether the misrepresentation is deliberate or accidental, and just work through them.

Incidentally lets also quickly welcome Martin's still quite faint praise for Wembley Library as a library "for local people". 

First off, Martin is concentrating still on Brent Council activities, which are only part of the economic policy of a party of national government like the Labour Party.  Indeed local authorities play quite a small part.  I actually quite like a lot of the stuff coming from the Heseltine Review about regional development, although more recognition that London is the UK's biggest region would be nice.

Anyway, lets concentrate on what Brent Council can do for the purposes of this post.

Are there any Magic Sectors?
For whatever reason, economic discussions often seem to praise one area of economic activity and denigrate others.  Martin claims Brent Green Party is quite anti-retail.  If so, I think that is as silly as being anti-construction or anti manufacturing as Thatcher was in the 1980s.  There is no magic part of the economy.  There is just a need for an overall balance.

The UK as a whole has a problem that our tradable sector is too small for our imports, and we need to correct that but things like tourism and indeed retail can contribute to our "exports" to some extent albeit they are no adequate substitution for high end manufacturing.

Living Standards
The current government seems wedded to a kind of asset stripping model where wages and other costs are ruthlessly pushed down.  This, aside being pretty miserable for people on low wages, doesn't seem to work.  Someone else will always be able to undercut us.  Whereas cost cutting works for an individual company, it doesn't work for the economy as a whole as all national economies rely primarily on the goods and services we sell to each other.  Cutting the income of one part of the economy cuts the income of others and sets us off on a downward spiral.

Labour's approach is more about modifying the benefits system so that it ceases to subsidise employers who refuse to give their employers a living wage.  This can be done partly through restructuring benefits, but also through promoting the Living Wage, and I would like to see a rise in the Minimum Wage which has been drastically eroded by inflation.  The main way the Council can influence this is through paying its own employees (They all get the London Living Wage and above), building a London Living Wage requirement into its contracts (as happened with the Public Realm contract recently) and encouraging private employers to pay the London Living Wage (as Islington claims some success in).

Training
A second area Councils can influence is education and training.  Brent has achieved a significant turnaround from exam results below the London and National average twenty years ago, to being above the London and National averages now.  We are now routinely examining contracts for opportunities to create apprenticeships, as well as in Brent's directly employed workforce. 

There are also some third sector organisations like LEAP that do interesting work in brokering and supporting people into jobs.  A key part of this kind of work is getting people to travel to opportunities.  Brent has good transport links to the rest of London, but many people from our poorest areas seem reluctant to use them.  We need to work out why that is.  Anecdotally, I have been told of recruitment difficulties by some employers, which seem to be more linked to attitudes than to harder barriers,.  Again, that needs more work.

Given Brent's particular demographics, I think there is scope for the Council helping people further, especially with language skills.  Anecdotally, I have heard that BACES are not always user friendly to complete novices in English and that may need to be addressed.  I think our libraries service are active in this way, as well as in encouraging English literacy for English speakers. 

Encouraging Small Businesses
Nationally, Labour has been prominent in promoting small businesses, which are a major engine of jobs growth, through events like Small Business Saturday.  The Council has also been active in trying to help people start their own businesses, as in the Kensal Green Kitchens Scheme.  I think it is fair to say that this is an area where Labour needs to develop its policies more in line with the outlines in Ed Miliband's Conference Speech.

Placemaking
The Council could do a lot to encourage businesses in areas like Ealing Road or Harlesden Town Centre through improving the Public Realm, as I have often advocated.  There is good research that
improving the quality of the public realm leads to increased turnover by local businesses.  Another key role for the Council would come in planning or supporting a unique selling point for different areas say food in Harlesden, an Asian offer in Ealing Road, the Arts in Kilburn High Road, the new Willesden Centre in Willesden and so on.  It would obviously be useful if national government would expand local authority powers on licensing and son on, as Ed Miliband recently promised on a Kilburn visit.

The Environmental Agenda
Finally, in what has become a rather longer post than I intended, our pressing environmental needs create economic opportunities.  These could come in all kinds of forms: retrofitting old homes, selling environmental advice as the Carbon Trust does (when we held an environmental event for businesses at the old Town Hall the Carbon Trust representative explained that the Carbon Trust had originally been set up to cut business costs, not for environmental purposes at all), creating markets through spreading awareness of environmental needs.

Martin makes a bit of a nod to this sort of thing in his "Green Enterprise Zone" idea, but it is is intriguing how many misconceptions lie behind that.  Firstly, the long term plans for the Wembley area (essentially shaped by the Labour Party) effectively give less emphasis on Wembley as a retail area than in the past.  That is arguably just a recognition of reality, but Martin seems to think we are doing the opposite.  Secondly, Martin seems to have forgotten about Park Royal, which is Europe's biggest Industrial estate with lots of space for all kinds of businesses, including green businesses, and companies like McVities that have really led environmental improvements in their areas.  Developing businesses there, along with ll the difficulties around transport and so on, would still be far easier than trying to overturn almost twenty years of Planning work around Wembley.

Hopefully all this gives some idea of the amount of work already underway through the Council and the Labour Party to develop Brent's economy.  However, boosting the economy in Brent is really something that can only really be done effectively if central government pursues an effective growth policy rather than the current actively damaging one.