FOR many players in the public realm, economic development has only one core objective. Stripped to its essentials, economic development equals the creation of jobs. And, since few policy objectives rank higher in the pantheon of public good works than creating jobs for those with none, it comes as no surprise that all sort of public agencies see themselves as essential players in the business of economic development.
Tourism bodies seem to me to talk almost as often about the importance of their industry in sustaining jobs and local prosperity as they do about how they are meeting the competitive challenge of luring more tourists to these shores. They are not alone. All sort of other agencies want to be seen to be doing their bit to build dynamism into the economy. But too many cooks can spoil the economic-development broth, peddling only their favoured ingredients, meddling self-interestedly in ways that sometimes threaten to reduce the whole concoction to bland mediocrity.
As well as the potential for blunting the strategic thrust of economic development, the proliferation of bodies claiming a prime role in the business of job creation throws up endless opportunities for friction and bad feeling. And nowhere has that danger been more evident down the years than in relations between the Scottish enterprise network and Scotland's local government.
Only this week, with jobs beginning to bleed out of the area's deeply troubled textiles industry, we had the Borders Council convener Drew Tulley lambasting one arm of Scottish Enterprise - Locate in Scotland - for allegedly acting like Locate in anywhere other than the South of Scotland. Councillor Tulley is simply the latest in a long line of elected local representatives who, before 1990, dubbed the SDA the Strathclyde Development Agency and since 1990 have harboured resentment of the power of the enterprise quangos in their sleeker offices along the road.
Scottish Enterprise, Highlands & Islands Enterprise, and their nationwide network of local enterprise companies see themselves as the premier-league teams in economic development. Local government fought hard and with a surprising degree of success, during the last Tory reform of their system, to retain a significant subordinate role. As the statutory planning authorities in their areas, councils could never be painted out of the picture completely. But the wider scope they still enjoy to pursue economic development objectives has sometimes been seen as a troublesome irritant by the inhabitants of Lecland.
The issue isn't simply who should be doing what to create jobs and prosperity. It is also about democratic legitimacy. As a recent Cosla paper on relations with appointed public bodies put it: ''In allocating responsibility for providing public services there should be a presumption in favour of
services being delivered under
direct democratic control.'' Local government clearly sees its democratic mandate as its
greatest strength in this long-running power struggle.
The Cosla paper goes on to explore ways in which local government might be given a role monitoring the activities of their appointed counterparts, in order to make bodies like the enterprise network more accountable to local people for the decisions they take. In the recent past, some leading voices in Scottish local government, like Councillor Jean McFadden, have gone further, advocating the return of some parts of the present remit of the enterprise network to direct local authority control.
Maximalist aspirations like Mrs McFadden's were doubtless encouraged by the Labour Party's bold talk, in opposition, of creating a bonfire of the quangos. But in government the bonfire hasn't even smoked let alone burst into flame. Instead, Labour's 1997 manifesto talked only of ''reinvigorating'' the activities of Scottish Enterprise and HIE by making the network ''more streamlined, more effective, and less bureaucratic''. Local government wasn't even mentioned by name in the further pledge to ''work with the Scottish business community, existing agencies and organisations'' to bring a more strategic approach to
economic development.
Even that pledge must be in some doubt after the Scottish Industry Minister's recent blank refusal to countenance even a reasoned debate about the thrust of inward investment strategy, following the jobs cut-back at Lite-On and the mothballing of the Hyundai semiconductor project in Fife. And with the words of the Scottish Secretary's Dick Stewart memorial lecture last night ringing in their ears, Labour councillors keen to extend their economic development remit must be beginning to wonder if anyone really loves them.
While you are reading this, I will be finding out. With elections to the Scottish Parliament now less than a year away, the enterprise network and local government have decided to spend a whole day talking to each other, courtesy of the Scottish Local Government Information Unit, about what happens next in economic development in Scotland. Top brass from both camps will be speaking. I will be there, in the chair, to hold the jackets. Or will I?
Faced with the prospect that this new player on Edinburgh's Mound - and later at Holyrood - will have legislative responsibility for both the Scottish enterprise network and Scottish local government and may indeed see aspects of economic development - remember the political potency of delivering effective job creation - as an in-house responsibility, the talk
across the enterprise/council divide now seems to be all about partnership and co-operation.
Past resentments are being quietly buried in pursuit of what Scottish Enterprise chairman Sir Ian Wood, in a precis of his contribution, is calling a ''common agenda'', a strategy based on ''wide consultation and consensus''. This is quintessential Blair-speak, is it not? While it is certainly true that Scottish Enterprise has pioneered some novel approaches to building a policy consensus - as in its business birth-rate strategy and the more recent commercialisation of academic science and technology initiative - it is not immediately clear to me that every other aspect of current economic development strategy commands consensus support.
So I will be looking for signs of some fresh and innovative thinking about the way ahead. If I don't find it today, I may have to drop the jackets and goad the participants into facing these more challenging economic development issues.
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