By Jessica Frank-Keyes
A Labour government will be a “partner that can unlock potential”, not a “barrier” to innovation, shadow minister Peter Kyle has pledged.
The shadow secretary of state for science, innovation and technology visited the capital’s Imperial College London campus for a tour of the universities’ cutting edge robotics and carbon capture technologies, and a round table discussion with industry experts.
Speaking exclusively to City A.M., Kyle praised the “brilliant partnership between the university research institution and also private sector companies doing their own innovation”.
And he stressed that, if elected, Labour would work to further such partnerships.
“That partnership can add up to more than the sum of its parts,” he said. “I just want there to be a third partner and that to be government.
“People talk about government as if it’s something that’s a barrier, a barrier when it comes to regulation, a barrier when it comes to planning, a barrier when it comes to bureaucracy.
“My ambition is for universities like this to see us as a partner that can unlock more potential.”
Kyle also criticised Rishi Sunak’s language on “Mickey Mouse degrees”, accusing him of “talking down” the higher education sector, and pledged that under Labour the “war on universities would end”.
The shadow minister insisted: “People should not underestimate the sheer scale of ambition that Sir Keir Starmer, his changed Labour Party and myself represent.”
It came as Starmer pledged his party would “pull the lever called ‘growth’”, as he insisted he will not have to raise taxes on working people if he was elected as Prime Minister.
Both Labour and the Conservatives have been criticised by Paul Johnson, director of the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), for their unwillingness to consider tax rises.
The IFS has repeatedly called for both main parties to “level” with the public about trade-offs between taxation, spending and borrowing, arguing that current plans will see real-terms spending cuts for departments unless more money is found via higher taxes or borrowing.
Speaking to reporters on Monday, Starmer insisted that growth is the answer, stressing: “The single biggest problem of the last 14 years is we haven’t had significant growth.
“If we’d had growth in the last 14 years at the same rate as the last Labour government, we’d have tens of billions of pounds to spend on our public services.
“I ran a public service, I care about public services. We are not going back to austerity, but we will pull the lever called ‘growth’.”
He added that Labour would reform public services to get more value for taxpayers’ money and repeated that his government would not raise income tax, national insurance or VAT.
