Baltic News 8
Creating Britain's northern superpower. Forget merely levelling up, with the right strategy, Glasgow can set the bar for the rest of the UK.
The title of this blog refers to our Our Scottish Future’s office at the Baltic Exchange in Glasgow. If you want to learn more about the work of Our Scottish Future, sign up here and get our reports, polling and articles straight to your email:
A Greater Glasgow
YESTERDAY we held a conference on how to grow the Glasgow economy. Nobody talked about politics. Everybody focussed on the opportunities for the city. It was really good.
Entitled “Britain’s Northern Superpower: building a Greater Glasgow”, we came together with Glasgow Chambers of Commerce and heard from a list of truly top class speakers on how to turn the city region into a global economic player.
Gordon Brown, CBI director general Tony Danker, Centre for Cities founder Lord Sainsbury and Glasgow City Council leader Susan Aitken topped the bill. We also heard from business figures like Jim McColl, Strathclyde University’s Chief Operating Officer Gillian Docherty, and Dr Susie Mitchell, the programme director at Glasgow City of Science and Innovation.
We wanted to focus on Glasgow because of its unique importance to Scotland: it is our one big metropolis. The city also sums up many of Britain’s wider challenge and opportunities. As Glasgow Chambers of Commerce point out, the city has an enviable set of raw ingredients: the population is growing, it has world class universities, a high number of graduates, new ‘anchor’ employers in the financial services sector, and a foothold in many new emerging growths sectors such as life sciences and advanced manufacturing.
Yet Britain’s big economic problem - low productivity - is particular acute in Glasgow and, of the “big four” outside London (Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham are the other three), it has relatively poor rates of start-ups and scale ups. Furthermore while Glasgow has a high number of highly skilled people, we need no reminding that it also is home to some of the worst poverty and deprivation in the UK.
If Levelling Up is to deliver, then it has to be about taking those ingredients and turning it into a recipe for action.
To summarise the points made by the main speakers, Gordon Brown called for the UK and Scottish Governments to clearly identify Glasgow as the UK centre of Precision Medicine. We have published a short paper on his proposals. Mr Brown spoke with characteristic verve about the opportunities for the city.
“As a country, we are divided on so many things, whether it’s culture or whether it’s about how to respond to the present inflationary crisis. We are divided on the constitutional question but we can all unite around the mission to make Glasgow and Scotland one of the big centres of a new cluster that could change the lives of millions medically, but also create some of the best new jobs of the future. Glasgow has got all of the attributes that could make it a world-leading centre in precision medicine.”
Lord Sainsbury took the long view, reflecting on the post-industrial legacy which has hung over cities like Glasgow, dampening growth and leading to Britain’s highly unequal economy. He set out a series of long-term reforms necessary to improve growth, arguing that a new “metro mayor” for the Glasgow region would help it get done.
“Having a mayor that operates at the Glasgow city region scale would enable the Mayor to better co-ordinate the policies needed to create the best conditions for the creation of high-tech clusters of businesses and new high value-added jobs. There is no point in trying to do this at the national level, UK or Scotland, where government is both very siloed and largely ignorant of the opportunities and difficulties faced by specific cities”
Tony Danker set out a blueprint on how to create a successful economic cluster: the key characteristics, he noted, were “a shared economic prize, an anchor institution (Cambridge and Oxford Universities are an obvious example), a powerful story to tell, a “go-to figure-head”, partnership working, and a supportive policy environment.
In Glasgow, he noted, emerging clusters included space, creative and digital technology, and the green economy. “You have high powered engines of growth here in Glasgow to lift the city and whole region,” he said.
Finally, Susan Aitken, the leader of the Council, told the conference that Glasgow was already a “an economic superpower", and pointed to city’s outstandingly successful staging of the COP 26 conference last year. Taking issue with the idea of metro mayors, she said the system in England had led to the “disintegration of local government” in England, but she said she supported proposals to increase powers for local government in Scotland.
Two panels of speakers then grappled with the question of skills, innovation and inequality in the city. We will write a full report on the conference over the coming weeks but a few things immediately jumped out for me.
Firstly, as Susan Aitken pointed out. the conference showed the remarkable amount of good stuff going on already in Glasgow: precision medicine, satellite manufacturing, enabling technology, financial services, world class events: the list goes on and on. Glasgow is a “multitasker”, as the Chambers of Commerce puts it. And there is real passion too: one of the speakers we invited to speak at the event was Professor Declan Doogan, a Glasgow-born pharmaceuticals entrepreneur now living in the States who travels home regularly – investing and working in Glasgow is in his heart. Glasgow really does have the raw material to overtake Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds to become Britain’s second city, of that there is no doubt.
Secondly, and call it ignorance on my part if you wish, but I have to admit I was not up to speed about the city’s economic infrastructure prior to organising the conference, despite living here for most of my adult life. Glasgow, a potential global centre for Precision Medicine: who knew? And I’m willing to wager I’m not alone. Lord Sainsbury’s point about the shadow of the 20th century hanging over the city is relevant here, and it doesn’t just relate to the social and economic consequences of 20th century deindustrialisation. It also still impacts on the self-image of the place and the story it tells itself and the rest of the world, one still overly dominated by loss and nostalgia for the past, not the opportunities of the future.
That’s not to say that heritage industries like shipbuilding and maritime won’t continue to be important in Glasgow, just that the city needs to be more ruthless and more focussed in telling people about the new vibrant industrial city emerging from the old. Put it this way: perhaps it’s time to pull down the rusting hulk of the Finnieston crane outside the Scottish Events Campus, a monument to a ship building past that’s gone and isn’t coming back, and replace it with a 100 foot statue of a massive space satellite.
And finally, we talked about the need to drive a more ambitious culture of opportunity and the need to show communities too often deprived of hope that such a culture will benefit them first and foremost. Clyde Blowers founder Jim McColl spoke passionately about the brilliant but sadly now defunct Newlands Junior College he set up a few years ago here to help give technical skills to 14-16 year old boys, enabling them to enter the world of work with confidence. Like Prof Doogan, McColl is another home boy made good who desperately wants to see his city perform better and offer improved life chances for young people.
As former Our Scottish Future CEO Henry Stannard said, the task is about giving people who have been hammered by inequality and falling living standards renewed belief that if they do work hard, there will be a just reward. Or as he put it: “It is no wonder we have a productivity problem when so many of the workforce in their heart of hearts do not believe that what they does matter, and do not believe that the rewards of success will trickle down to their families and their communities.”
It was good for once to listen to a series of superb and eloquent speakers talk about problems that exist in the here and now, opportunities that exist in the here and now, and solutions that can be implemented in the here and now. Glasgow can have a bright future if these voices are listened to.
ENDS
I was present yesterday and can confirm that it was a very worthwhile event. Strengthening the economy of the Glasgow Area should be among the two or three top economic priorities for the Scottish government but will also need strong support from the UK government.
As was pointed out we need high value added, world beating industries to drive growth. These will tend to come from our universities and I think there is a good understanding of this at all levels though we must never let up in what is, by its nature, a highly competitive business.
We also need to make sure that growth is inclusive. Everyone of working age in the area needs to have the opportunity of a fulfilling and well paid job. Much of our ability to deliver that will depend more on the schools and colleges rather than universities and here there is cause for concern - as articulated by Jim McColl. We simply cannot afford to have anything other than an excellent education system for the 50% who do not go to university. I am far from convinced about the Scottish government's current reforms but one relatively simple step could help a lot.
School and college inspection should be made independent of government by making it answerable to Parliament in the manner of the Auditor General. The Bill currently before Parliament provides an opportunity to do that.