HISTORIC PRESS RELEASE : Gordon Brown sets new Productivity Challenge for Employers and Workers [October 2000]

The press release issued by HM Treasury on 19 October 2000.

Chancellor Gordon Brown today launched a new challenge to employers and workers to exploit this moment of hard-won economic stability to close the productivity gap with Britain’s main competitors. He called on employers and workers to tackle the key barriers to higher productivity growth: restrictive practices, low skills, resistance to innovation and under-investment.

Speaking in London to the Confederation of British Industry, Gordon Brown urged employers, employees, investors and others to work together to address the productivity challenge:

“I want to concentrate our attention on the moment of opportunity our hard won stability is now giving to our country. How we can build upon that hard-won monetary and fiscal stability to bridge the 35 per cent productivity gap with our competitors.

If we are to seize and not squander this hard won moment of opportunity, we must challenge each other – investors, managers, workforces, educationalists – that we should, without complacency, address and overcome the old British problems which many consider to be short-termism and under-investment, inadequate skills, resistance to change and to new technology, and over complacency and a failure to benchmark the best.

So this is my challenge. I can tell you today what Government can and will contribute: stable policies will continue so there will be no sudden lurches in tax or spending policy, no irresponsible pre-election sprees, no irresponsible wage increases that will put youth jobs or any jobs at risk, no relaxing our fiscal rules.

We will play our part in creating the best competitive environment and investing in the potential of our people and I will address these issues in the coming Pre-Budget Report.”

The Chancellor went on to outline the challenge he is setting today:

“I believe as a country we can do far, far more. We cannot bridge the gaps, however, without a broader drive from managers and workforces across the country to solve together productivity problems which each cannot solve on their own.

I have called on the Presidents of the CBI and TUC, the Director General of the CBI, and the General Secretary of the TUC to invite a positive response from unions and managements in regions and in sectors to address some of our old problems and together work through an agenda for economic reform. In short, whether we can remove all the old barriers to employment and prosperity for all.

I propose that, to tackle the productivity issue, the CBI should work with the TUC, educationalists and others to meet the challenge I have set out.”