Securing Britain’s High-Tech Future
Apple Inc is now worth over $750bn, more than twice the value of Exxonmobil (the world’s second most valuable company on the stock markets). Apple’s two rivals, Google and Microsoft, are both valued in excess of $300bn, making three of the world’s five largest companies former technology startups.
Technology companies now play a huge role in the global economy and, with the up and coming clean energy revolution (see Tesla and SolarCity), this trend is only set to continue. The market is pointing toward a high-tech future, but policymakers across the globe are failing to keep up with the rapid rate of change.
The UK in particular has been unable to respond to the demands of the digital economy. In October 2015, the British Media Interactive Association found that 95% of its member companies were being held back by a lack of available talent in the IT sector.
Is the skills gap the only reason for the UK’s failure to grasp hold of the technology revolution? The fact that computer science graduates face the highest level of unemployment of all university leavers suggests that this is not the case.
According to the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), computer science graduates face an unemployment rate of 11% — almost double the average rate of 6%. In an economy where demand should be rapidly growing for talented programmers, computer science graduates still face a tough job market.
The technology sector is doing well (receiving a record £2.64bn venture capital investment in 2015), but evidently not well enough. London alone gets about 60% of all inward investment into the sector, however a brutal housing market means that opportunities arising from this investment are limited to only a small part of the population.
Embracing technology shouldn’t just be about creating a British Silicon Valley, it should be about restructuring the whole economy to compete on a global level. The UK needs a high-tech edge that can only be achieved with dramatic investment in our infrastructure and skills:
- Even after the government’s rollout of superfast broadband, one in five businesses will be left with slow, inequadate connection speeds.
- According to Go ON UK, over 12 millon people ‘lack the skills to succeed in the modern economy’.
- Many areas of the UK are particularly ill-equiped to compete. For example, Wales suffers some of the slowest broadband speeds in the country combined with low digital literacy rates.
The loss of a futher 1,000 steel jobs at the start of 2016 should be a clear warning to the government that an aggressive strategy is needed to cope with our growing trade deficit and our overall dependency on financial services. The rise of new, innovative technologies presents an unprecedented opportunity to create new jobs and prosperity, but action must be taken now to avoid losing out permanently to the USA, South Korea, China, and Germany.
