Food sector key to UK’s recovery, Vince Cable
Speaking at the Food and Drink Federation’s (FDF’s) annual President’s Dinner on Tuesday evening in London, Cable said the UK needed to move away from its dependency on financial services and build a future based on manufacturing exports.
“[Food and drink] is a key industry in an economy that has been through an extraordinary once in a lifetime experience … as a country it has been economic equivalent of a heart attack, a major, major shock from which we are just recovering,” said Cable.
“We have got to try to produce a model of growth that we can sustain. And that means shifting the emphasis from consumption to investment. From the public sector to the private sector, from an excessive dependence on banking to manufacture, from looking at our home market to exporting.”
Biggest manufacturing sector
Cable added: “You are key part of that story … you are the biggest manufacturing sector; very important as an employer – high productivity, high levels of innovation, your exports, £10bn last year – a very important industry and therefore absolutely essential to our recovery.”
FDF president Jim Moseley called on the government to be more ambitious in its plans for growth and to work with industry to put food and drink at the heart of economic recovery, helping to remove barriers that impede its progress.
Moseley said: “To fight off stiff competition from the emerging economies and take advantage of the opportunities of these new markets, the UK has to stay at the forefront of innovation through new technologies, new products and processes. We need to remove barriers that inhibit our progress and distractions that have no value to the consumer.”
