Growth Strategy - Our Plan for Prosperity

• The Prime Minister and Peter Mandelson will today publish a growth strategy, our plan for prosperity.

• The Government is getting on with the job, under Gordon Brown's leadership, of taking Britain forward and out of recession by publishing our strategy for securing growth.

• Britain needs to plan for more than simply recovery from recession. We need to drive long-term sustainable growth - and Government has to play an active role in that. We face structural changes in the global economy linked to globalisation, technological change, climate change, natural resource pressure and demographics that are radically changing the world in which our businesses and people compete. To prosper in this changing economic environment we need the right combination of investment, private enterprise and public policy.

• Today's Growth Paper builds on the action we have taken over the past year, e.g. the Pre-Budget Report included a new growth fund to provide capital investment for innovative companies, a new body to provide strategic leadership in upgrading Britain's infrastructure, and financial incentives for students who undertake additional training in key sectors like life sciences and advanced manufacturing. An additional £200 million was allocated to Britain's Strategic Investment Fund for supporting low carbon industrial innovation.

• Today we will announce new measures building on this, including:

• New Innovative Manufacturing Research Centres as part of a new £70 million initiative to develop growth in UK manufacturing.
• A new UK Life Sciences Super Cluster to bring industry together with the UK's leading researchers and clinicians to drive innovation in early stage drug and medical technology development.
• A goal to improve our position in the World Bank rankings for "Ease of Doing Business" from 5th place to 4th, ahead of the USA and make us first in G20, plus initiatives to help us meet that target.
• The UK Borders Agency will build new additional flexibility in the points-based immigration system to create a simpler way for employers to bring in non-EEA interns and trainees.
• Small Business Research Initiative - competitions to be launched early 2010 will improve the energy efficiency of public buildings, working with DECC and to develop Ultra Efficient Lighting solutions for domestic use, in conjunction with DEFRA.
• £30m of new Technology Strategy Board investments to stimulate business innovation in those areas which offer the greatest scope for boosting UK growth and productivity.

• The Conservatives, by contrast, would deliver a decade of low growth and austerity. They would choke off the recovery by cutting support for the economy at the worst possible time. And their ideological opposition to an active Government means they would be completely unable to build the low carbon economy of the future. As Peter Mandelson has argued, we need not a big state or a small state but a smart state.