Political opinion with Amanda Martin MPP: Backing British business: At home and around the world

This week, we’ve taken two major steps to do just that.

On Monday, the government launched our its Industrial Strategy, a bold, long-term plan to get British business growing again. It’s a strategy built on partnership, not short-term fixes.

It will unlock billions in investment, cut energy costs by 30% for key industries like car manufacturing and steel, and create 1.1 million good, well-paid jobs across the country. In Portsmouth, that could mean new opportunities in defence and a route for local people to gain access skills and training and a pathway to highly paid work and more money in peoples’ pockets.

We’re also investing in the skills our economy needs – creating 60,000 new training places in areas like digital, engineering and defence. And we’re making the UK the best place in the world to invest, with a ten-year plan to slash red tape and give businesses the confidence to grow.

On Thursday, we went even further with the publication of our Trade Strategy, a serious plan to help British businesses sell more goods and services around the world. We’ve already struck major deals with India, the US and the EU — unlocking billions in trade, protecting jobs, and opening new markets for everything from whisky to advanced manufacturing.

The government isn’t stopping there. Our new Ricardo Fund will remove barriers to trade and unlock £5 billion in export opportunities. We’re also expanding UK Export Finance by £20 billion to help more businesses secure overseas orders. And we’re cutting red tape at the border that make exporting faster and cheaper.

In combination, these measures will mean that businesses in the UK will be best placed to take full advantage of our home-grown high-opportunity industries of the future and able to engage in our agile outward looking trading environment. This means that an entrepreneur in Portsmouth, could set up their first enterprise in defence, able to grow their business, training and employing local people with access to support and finance available to sell their goods around the world.

This is a government that listens to business, acts on what it hears, and delivers. A government that’s serious about growth, serious about jobs, serious about making Britain an open trading nation and serious about making Britain better off.

So this week, I hope you’ll join me in celebrating a government that’s backing British business – at home and around the world.