For too long, Welsh economic policy has been dominated by the politics of representation rather than the discipline of delivery
The musical Hamilton.(Image: Danny Kaan)
In the musical Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda gives Aaron Burr a whole song built on a single frustration: that the bargains that shape a nation are struck not in public but behind closed doors, and among a handful of people who have been granted a seat at the table.
Burr’s complaint is being left outside, desperate to be in the “room where it happens” and it is one of the oldest truths in politics, namely that influence flows to whoever is in that room, and that everyone else can only guess at what was decided on their behalf. But the more interesting question is rarely who is in the room but whether the right people are in it at all.
For 27 years, Wales has had devolution, its own economic strategies, advisory groups, and endless consultations. Yet throughout that period, one remarkably consistent feature of Welsh economic policy has been that the same familiar business organisations have been invited into the same rooms as ministers to offer broadly similar views on the same persistent problems.
A range of business membership bodies, employer groups and professional networks have all played a part in that process, and it would be unfair to suggest that they have not done useful work, because many of them represent genuine concerns, and act as a bridge between ministers, officials and the business community at times when government needs to hear directly from those operating in the real economy.
But after more than a quarter of a century of devolved economic policy, and after repeated strategies promising stronger growth, better productivity and a more resilient private sector, we have a right to ask some uncomfortable questions about the system that has been created and the voices we have allowed to dominate it.
This is not a criticism of any one organisation, nor is it an argument that representative bodies have no place in policymaking, as they clearly do. The issue is more fundamental, as representation is not the same as leadership and being present in the machinery of government is not the same as changing the economy’s performance outside it.
The danger for Wales is that we have spent too long assuming that, because business organisations have been invited to sit on a panel to comment on economic policy, business itself has therefore been properly involved in reshaping the country’s future.
The truth is far more complicated, and many representative organisations are, by their nature, cautious institutions as they must reflect a wide range of interests, avoid alienating too many of their members, and usually gravitate towards the lowest common denominator rather than the sharpest edge of economic change.
Indeed, the very characteristics that make these organisations acceptable to government can also make them insufficient for the task now facing Wales.
They are respectable, familiar, structured and consultative, but those are not always the qualities needed to challenge the economic challenges facing Wales, and it is likely that most of the same bodies that have supported the Labour Government for more than a quarter of a century will be sitting down with the new Plaid Cymru Enterprise Minister over the next few weeks to say much of the same things they did to his predecessor.
Some will argue that this is the realpolitik of doing business in Wales, but what has it achieved? Where are the organisations prepared to push harder, speak more directly, and challenge the comfortable assumptions that have underpinned economic policy for too long?
Where are those who, after decades of public investment in skills, infrastructure, innovation and enterprise support, question why we still do not have enough firms capable of competing seriously in the UK and global markets?
Indeed, the question is not whether business should continue to have a voice – of course it should – but it is less likely to represent the founders still outside the system, especially the disruptive entrepreneurs who should be at the heart of any serious economic development strategy.
And yet it is precisely those people and those businesses that Wales needs far more of, and the next phase of Welsh economic development cannot be built solely around organisations whose primary function is to explain the business concerns of a small number of firms to government.
For too long, Welsh economic policy has been dominated by the politics of representation rather than the discipline of delivery, and it seems very few people have been asking serious questions about why Wales still produces too few high-growth firms, why ambitious founders often look outside Wales for finance and networks, and why public investment still too often fails to generate lasting private-sector momentum.
This is not an argument for excluding existing organisations from the debate but one for rebalancing it, because whilst the established representative bodies have knowledge, members and experience, Wales also needs those business voices that are constructive but uncomfortable, collaborative but demanding, practical but ambitious.
So here is a simple test of whether anything has genuinely changed under a new government. Rather than just having talks with the usual bodies, the minister could, within his first hundred days, bring together the founders and chief executives of Wales’s most 100 innovative and entrepreneurial companies for a summit built around one question: what would it take to double the number of Welsh businesses scaling past £10m over the next four years? Not a consultation but a working session of the people building real growth, many of whom have never once been invited into the room.
Given the way that the civil service in Wales seems terrified of anyone with a radical idea, I expect the comfortable consensus to continue as it always has, with the same familiar faces sitting around the same table, but I would be delighted to be proved wrong, and it would be a truly new start for devolution in Wales if those in power were willing to fill the room where it happens with the incredible businesses that are building the country’s future.
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