Today’s Budget shows the need for “fresh ideas” to tackle productivity

Today’s Budget confirms that productivity is not just a topic for economists, it determines the prosperity of every family in Britain. The price of our low productivity is now locked into our country’s growth prospects.

In only six months, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) have today downgraded productivity growth by 40-50 per cent per year for each of the next five years, arguing that our poor productivity performance will likely prove more durable.

We urgently need fresh ideas to break the cycle of low productivity. And while government can help, we need a new movement engaging every business in the country to tackle the productivity challenge.

The chancellor today tackles long term productivity through the National Productivity Investment Fund, and we welcome that, though it may be years, if not decades, before such initiatives change national productivity statistics.

To get productivity moving immediately, we need a much stronger focus on how businesses can improve their own productivity through changes in leadership and management.

We need every firm to understand their own productivity performance to see where they can improve against best in class, and get better at learning the lessons from the UK’s highly productive companies – of all sectors and sizes.

This is the work of Be the Business in the months and years ahead.