Return of industrial strategy good for universities – Greg Clark

Labour’s industrial strategy proposals for the UK have been welcomed by former Conservative business secretary Greg Clark, who said they could help universities to become central to the new government’s investment plans.

Having overseen universities for a year as higher education minister, and then for three years as business secretary until July 2019, Mr Clark has been a long-time champion of academic research and its role in driving innovation and economic prosperity. Universities were heavily cited in the industrial strategy he launched in 2017, which was dumped in 2021 during Kwasi Kwarteng’s short tenure as chancellor.

Having stood down from Parliament this year, Mr Clark now chairs the Warwick Innovation District, a new project established by the University of Warwick to help connect industry, academia, local authorities and national government on issues of innovation and research.

Speaking to Times Higher Education, Mr Clark said he hoped the new industrial strategy, the subject of a green paper published on 8 October, would help universities to engage more extensively with industry and other partners – an activity that some critics believe has been sidelined since higher education was removed from the Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy in 2020 and placed in the Department for Education.

“There has always been an eternal debate about where the universities brief should be, given the diversity of what they do – should they be in Education, in the Business Department, the Cabinet Office? There are pro and cons for each,” said Mr Clark, who was mostly recently chair of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee.

Labour’s industrial strategy green paper – which prioritises eight “growth-driving sectors”, including advanced manufacturing, life sciences, clean energy and digital technologies – would help to bring universities into the conversation on economic growth in the way this happened under his watch, he continued.

“It may seem like a bit of an internal plumbing matter for government, but it is vitally important – how do you integrate different policies, departments and actors into a coherent whole? If the [industry strategy] is done right, it is the solution to this problem,” he said.

In this respect, Warwick might be seen as a front runner, given its history of connecting research to the industrial needs of the West Midlands manufacturing sector – most notably under the influence of the late Lord Bhattacharyya, the engineering professor behind the feted Warwick Manufacturing Group, said Mr Clark.

“I’ve always thought of Warwick as the ‘industrial strategy university’,” he said.

“If you look at what he and the late Ratan Tata did, you can see why universities are so crucial to this agenda. Ratan rescued Jaguar Land Rover, but, to a large part, that was down to the association with Warwick and the research that was happening next door.”

With Warwick’s research aligned with “at least six” of the sectors identified by the strategy, and its plans to invest £700 million to revamp its campus and engage more widely with industry, the university was well poised to benefit from the plans, said Mr Clark.

Given that ministers are keen to see visible results from investment within a few years, universities may be the institutions that are most relied upon, Mr Clark added. “You can set priorities, but ministers can’t do these things themselves – that relies on partners on the ground, and universities are ideal for this,” he said.

“Ministers will want to see things happening by the end of the parliament in four or five years’ time – having researchers and students working together on projects is a really good way to make this happen.”

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com