BERR goes and Alan Sugar gets government job promoting business
Listen to this item
Two big changes affecting the way government deals with small business have emerged out of the current spate of resignations and today’s cabinet reshuffle.
Firstly Alan Sugar, the business star from TV’s The Apprentice has accepted a new role promoting enterprise from within government. The role is unpaid, but Sir Alan is expected to accept a peerage, which will enable him to speak on business topics from within the House of Lords.
Text of official announcement below.
Press comment: Sugar
Secondly the government department with overall responsibility for business in the UK, BERR, is disappearing in a merger with DIUS, the department in charge of higer education. The new merged department, called BIS or “Business, Innovation and Skills”, will be taking over both roles - under the control of the current Business Secretary Peter Mandelson.
Press comment: BIS
From BERR site Sir Alan will act as an adviser to small businesses and Government and will work closely with Small Business Minister Shriti Vadera and Trade and Investment Minister Mervyn Davis. Sir Alan is expected to give advice on how to ensure small firms and entrepreneurs make the most of the real help available from Government and other organisations. He will champion the causes of viable small companies with banks and help to ensure the voices of small firms and entrepreneurs are heard by Government, suppliers and other entities. Areas he may look at include access to finance, prompt payment, how to handle the downturn and how to start a new business. The post will be unpaid.
Sir Alan Sugar has been appointed as the Government’s Enterprise Champion.
New Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to lead fight against recession and build now for future prosperity. The Government has today created a new Department for Business, Innovation and Skills whose key role will be to build Britain’s capabilities to compete in the global economy. The Department will be created by merging BERR and DIUS. This will create a single department committed to building Britain’s future economic strengths. To compete in a global economy and create the jobs of the future Britain requires a regulatory environment that encourages enterprise, skilled people, innovation, and world-class science and research. The merger of BERR and DIUS brings together the parts of the government with key expertise in these areas. It combines BERR’s strengths in shaping the enterprise environment, analysing the strengths and needs of the various parts of British industry, building strategies for industrial strength and expertise in better regulation with DIUS’s expertise in maintaining world class universities, expanding access to higher education, investing in the UK’s science base and shaping skills policy and innovation through bodies such as the Technology Strategy Board. It also puts the UK’s Further Education system and universities closer to the heart of government thinking about building now for the upturn. The new department is the institutional realisation of the approach to promoting UK competitiveness and productivity as set out in the New Industries, New Jobs paper of April 2009, produced jointly by BERR and DIUS. The new department will: Advocate the needs of business across government, especially of UK small businesses; Promote an enterprise environment that is good for business and good for consumers; Design tailored policies for sectors of the UK economy that represent key future strengths and where government policy can add to the dynamics of the market; Assess the changing skills needs of the UK economy, especially the intermediate and high skills vital in a global economy and design policies to meets them through public and privately funded life long training; Invest in the development of a higher education system committed to widening participation, equipping people with the skills and knowledge to compete in a global economy and securing and enhancing Britain’s existing world class research base; Continue to invest in the UK’s world class science base and develop strategies for commercialising more of that science; Continue to invest in skills through the Further Education system to help people through the downturn and to prepare Britain for the future; Deliver on the government’s ambitious objectives to expand the number of apprenticeships; Encourage innovation in the UK; Defend a sound regulatory environment that encourages enterprise and skills; Collaborate with the RDAs in building economic growth in the English regions; Work with the EU in shaping European regulation and European policies that affect the openness of the single market and the competitiveness of European and British companies; Continue to work to expand UK exports and encourage inward investment to the UK. Last updated 05 June 2009
New Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS)
Print this item
June 6th, 2009 at 1:40 pm
More restructuring…. more of the same. I am 54, so youthful that people do not put my years beyond 45 and they are shocked when they realise my age. I worked my way out of the poverty trap as a single parent (15 years) through education. I have done what any government would wish anyone in my position to do.
Now educated to Post-doctoral level in Science and Technology Policy, Innovation Studies / Technolocy Innovation management (!!) with nearly 10 years professional experience as a research fellow in 2 Universities (fixed-terms) and some consultancy, business services experience, I was made redundant in June 2007 and have found it IMPOSSIBLE to return to work.
I have just about exhausted everything I can think of. I have rallied career advisers, professional CV reviewers, searched and targeted different job profiles using transferable knowledge and skills….and applied for positions in the public sector (County Councils), private sector and third sector organisations……… in vain.
I have offered support to projects during my period of unemployment, undertaken an internship in a small London consultancy set up by young professionals to keep myself up to date and active…travelling up to 5 hours a day to reach the office location and juggling difficulties with my teenage daughter. After 6 weeks, this was not viable because of the travelling essentially. The company enjoyed my skills and expertise in the preparation of a Business Review for a WRAP report, for which they had a paid contract.
Two years on, I am still unemployed and failing to make a dent into finding a path back through the labour market back into work despite my perseverance… This is NOT because of the recession. OK the recession will make things tougher but my abilities, knowledge and skills are of great relevance to the times. I cannot count the number of job applications any longer.
There is a point at which ‘thinking outside the box’ becomes almost an ‘empty space’ and important questions have to be asked. I feel like going on a strike from job applications!! In the meantime, I have worked my way back to the bottom, treading the line of the poverty trap once again. I cannot support my daughter through her education.
What difference will the BIS as opposed to the DIUS make? Little unless more radical initiatives are taken to address some of the existing fundamental failures embedded in our labour markets. They go and hire Alan Sugar! How about participatory democracy? Another set of words that are much used to little effect!
How about asking those of us ‘at the bottom’ who are knowledgeable and pretty skilled, with good analytical brains and plenty of grassroot experience - and who have first hand experience of the many ‘glass ceilings’ that (in this case) women are experiencing at work and in the labour market? Because there are many ‘glass ceilings’. It is not just the glass ceiling that blocks women from accessing jobs at board level!!!
I have tried to engage with the Local Economic Partnership..in vain. Tried to find out about the role of the Local Employment Partnerships and how these may contribute to helping me find a path back into work… Nobody even talks about them anymore, they have been lost into the negative expectations of low skilled, low educational achievement that they see as the typical profile of the job seeker on benefit…. This is what a woman lone parent on benefit should look like, low skilled, no education.. if she is not, then, she must have ‘failed somehow’.. Wrong…I am not low skilled and uneducated, I am not lacking experience…and I have achieved a great deal considering where I started from!!
Shouldn’t I be a positive example who should have found a sustainable way out of the poverty trap and the support to make sure that I do not fall back into the trap of being a charge on public funds?
I wish I could ask for an independent review (for example) of all the job applications I have put to my local county council. At least, this might provide a truly CONSTRUCTIVE POSITIVE assessment of these applications that might enable me to understand why in the last couple of years I have failed to even make it through to an interview EVEN when my knowledge and skills (and a great deal of my experience) ticked the boxes of the person’s specifications. And I spent a great deal of time and effort making sure this was reflected in the application form that I filled in to apply for the positions, cross-checking every essential and desirable items on the list! Getting the job is one thing, not being invited for an interview another.
Feedback from employers on job applications is appalling and the reasons for not making it through to an interview remains, in my experience, at best obscure.
Too much.
July 15th, 2010 at 10:19 am
It has taken me six years to develop a small screen technology going through
all the hoops to obtain a granted patent. The IP stands alone and has fantastic
appeal for big ticket branding and the upcoming Olympics.
I don’t think that anyone outside creative electronic design or innovation could
possibly believe how difficult it is to succeed in developing a new concept, you
can forget the government I am still waiting for an email from Baroness someone
or other, and as that was six months ago I doubt if I will hear.If you deliver it is
in despite of the government bodies not because of them.
The UK is just waking up after the big sleep to the land of Dunking Doughnuts,
Buy to Let,Coffee Shops,and ladies hairdressing salons. Manufacturing industry
long gone never to return.
Sad very sad