WHETHER it originates from Europe or Whitehall, the fact is that money for regional development in our part of the world is drying up.
Funds for big, prestigious city centre projects like those we have seen in the past ten years will no longer be available. Nor will the huge business parks that have been created on the outskirts of town continue to be developed at the same pace.
With very little new money around, the biggest question facing our economic planners is where will the city region’s future growth come from?
The proposed creation of a BioCampus near the new Royal Liverpool University Hospital is part of the attempt to answer that question.
The idea is that the new facilities to be constructed there will allow bio-medical researchers to develop new treatments, including breakthrough drugs, to tackle the world’s most devastating diseases.
The promoters behind the BioCampus see an opportunity to build on existing links between the Royal Hospital and the nearby university. Both institutions already carry out a considerable amount of research into diseases like HIV, leukaemia and stomach cancer, but much R&D, and the associated jobs, migrates to other places when it comes to later stage development and commercialisation.
An example of this is Provexis, a biotechnology firm based at the Merseybio incubator unit at the university. Much of Provexis’s early stage R&D was performed at Merseybio, but, once it listed on the London Stock Exchange, Provexis’s geographical locus became ambiguous, with at least some of its functions and senior people moving away from the region.
So any development that helps keep growing firms on Merseyside for the long term is a good thing, particularly if it results in more well-paid science jobs here. Yet, as Provexis shows, these jobs are highly mobile.
The principal assets of these businesses are safely stowed in the heads of the researchers, and, if they want to live down south, then that’s what will happen. As a result, there has to be some doubt about whether the new BioCampus will achieve this objective.
SHOULD the news from Mumbai yesterday that Tata Motors is planning to open a new Land Rover manufacturing plant in China worry staff at its UK operations?
The company insists that the plan will not affect output at either of its UK factories, including Halewood, where the Land Rover Freelander 2 and the Range Rover Evoque are made. Undoubtedly that undertaking will prove to be correct, initially at least.
The company says the plan is only to use the Chinese plant to construct cars sold in China. Sounds fine, but that in itself must surely adversely affect the UK factories, where cars sold in China are currently made.
While the number of vehicles sold in China is currently small, sales are rising fast. So far this calendar year, 12,500 cars have been sold in China and sales have doubled in the past three months alone. Even if UK sales continue to rise strongly, making cars in China will represent a lost opportunity here.
Perhaps Tata believes that UK-produced cars can’t compete on price in China, where they would come up against competition from models made in cheaper economies.
Over the longer term, the decision to start manufacturing operations in China could turn out to be the thin end of the wedge. It is possible that much more production could be shifted overseas in the decades ahead.
