Beckett: "a greater focus on competitiveness"

Beckett: Britain Should Be World-Beaters

In a speech to leading industrialists in London, she said she would be summoning a "Competitiveness summit" next month ahead of a more detailed consultation exercise.

"It is crystal clear that if our future is to be one of prosperity and harmony Britain must become and remain more competitive and that path to competitiveness is one of partnership," she said.

"I am not advocating that Government seeks to do the job of others. I am saying however that Government must play its own proper role - take its own place in that partnership," insisted Mrs Beckett.

"It is my ambition to take this agenda to every region and across every Whitehall department. British business deserves no less," she added.

Mrs Beckett said that she would be publishing a competitiveness audit next month which would establish a "benchmark for Britain" against which future progress could be judged.~

Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Ms Beckett said that the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has a "very important role" to play in improving relations between government and business and in helping to make Britain more competitive.

"It (the DTI) is on the one hand a ministry whose chief concern is competitiveness, that is why the competition unit has returned to the DTI. It is also the ministry which is the interface for government with business."

Ms Beckett said that under the last government "the ideologues took the view that there was no role for government in business, and their view held sway "We had extensive consultations in Opposition with the business community. We were asked if we would continue that. Yes we will, and what I will be talking about this morning is the means by which we will do it."

"I am against ideologues full stop. What I am interested in are practical people with practical understanding and ideas of what will work which will make Britain more receptive in the future than in the past."

Asked to detail the timetable for the EU's Working Time directive, Ms Beckett said the government would be scrutinising the consultation paper on the subject produced by the Conservatives.