Leaders: Narrow focus is coalition’s most promising strategy

IT DID not take long yesterday for critics of the Queen’s Speech to emerge from the left and right of a coalition trailing blood from last week’s local elections.

The legislative programme is being assailed for being too small, too unambitious, lacking in vision and, above all, in not having a “big idea” to rescue a listless economy. But the package of just 15 bills and four draft bills can be judged realistic in two key respects.

First, it is a programme for a coalition which, by its nature, has a limited radius of common ground. Best, surely, to concentrate on a limited programme capable of achievement than overload an already accident-prone administration with legislative ambitions that may weaken it further.

Second, it is arguably more realistic on economic recovery measures than its critics allow. The problems of faltering growth are not confined to the UK but are evident across America and Europe. Measures have already been rolled out across three budgets to help small business investment and expansion. And there is a limit to how far employment regulation can be cut before voters see this process as a threat to employment.

The fact is that this government, and any successor to it, is tightly boxed in by the circumstances in which we find ourselves. We are faced with complex problems for which there is neither a readily available nor widely agreed remedy. The coalition may thus claim to have made the most of the very limited space – politically and economically – available to it.

That said, there is troubling evidence of a vagueness of ambition and purpose evident in some of the proposals. House of Lords reform lacks a compelling end result. The central problem of a democratically elected second chamber is the danger that it would compete in power and influence with the Commons while diluting the status and legitimacy of the latter. And any reform now may well be overtaken by changes flowing from further devolution to Scotland.

Similar fuzziness marks the proposal to legislate on curbs on executive pay. Given the shareholder rebellions in recent weeks, it is clear a tide has turned and that there is a growing demand for investor votes on executive pay to be made enforceable rather than advisory, as now.

But there are complications such as previously agreed employment contracts and whether such changes could be enforceable on the overseas subsidiaries of UK firms.

Given the latest confidence-sapping turbulence in the eurozone it is well that the UK parliament is not over-burdened with complex and divisive legislation and that it has some means to respond.

It is more often the unexpected event than carefully planned legislative programmes that determine the preoccupations and the destiny of governments. And that may certainly prove the case in the period ahead.

Growing Scotland’s seeds

A TROUBLING but insistent complaint among information technology firms and those charged with recruiting for them has centred on the shortage of available staff in Scotland with appropriate training. Given the background of rising unemployment, especially among 16- to 24 year-olds, this is surely a mismatch in need of urgent policy action.

Lena Wilson, chief executive of Scottish Enterprise, gave the Scottish Parliament’s finance committee cause for thought yesterday when she insisted youngsters going through school now could be almost guaranteed work if they focused on growth areas. She said a “cultural change” was required where pupils and parents looked far more closely at careers in engineering and IT, rather than the traditional professions.

Ms Wilson, together with Strathclyde University’s professor Jim Mcdonald and the Scottish head of Lloyds Banking Group Philip Grant, were invited to the session as a result of The Scotsman’s Growing Scotland series last month in which they called for a renewed focus on growth opportunities in the economy.

The mismatch between employment availability and insufficient school leavers with qualifications in science, technology and maths, reflects underlying changes in an economy arguably over-supplied with lawyers and accountants but short of young people to meet the growing ambitions of companies in the fields of IT, renewable energy, high-end engineering and life sciences.

After yesterday’s evidence, MSPs would be wise to task Skills Development Scotland with promoting the opportunities in such sectors and to help educate schools and parents of the opportunities available.