Mayor of the West Midlands Andy Street speaking to the Express & Star at Jaguar Land Rover, Wolverhampton as he unveils details of a landmark project to supercharge the region's booming Tech sector.t

Express & Star

Mayor of the West Midlands Andy Street speaking to the Express & Star at Jaguar Land Rover, Wolverhampton as he unveils details of a landmark project to supercharge the region's booming Tech sector.

Transcript

00:00 We're here at the Jaguar Range Rover engine plant at the I54 in Wolverhampton.

00:09 I'm joined here by the Mayor of the West Midlands, Andy Street.

00:13 He's been here today to announce the proposed future tech festival in the West Midlands,

00:21 which he hopes will put the West Midlands at the centre of British technological innovation.

00:27 First of all, would you be able to describe what the event will look like for the people who live in the region, what they'll see?

00:33 Yes, so this idea works really well in the US, is the first thing to say.

00:39 So there's a proven way of doing this. It's hosted in Austin, Texas, and it's called South by Southwest there.

00:46 And it's made Austin, Texas the sort of lead tech city in the US.

00:50 And it brings together lots and lots of visitors, literally thousands,

00:55 and runs for a number of days, has a number of events.

00:58 So people in the tech sector, people who are in sectors affected by tech, you know,

01:03 so it might be life sciences, it might be engineering, might be professional services.

01:07 And of course, then it links to the creative sector as well.

01:10 So film, TV, music all come together for a series of events.

01:15 So it's like a massive conference and shows the power of tech to change the economy.

01:20 But what it's done for them is it's put them at the centre of the industry.

01:24 There's a gap in the whole European market to do this. We believe we can do it.

01:29 And for people who live here, what will they see going on?

01:32 You know, people who live here, perhaps who don't work in the sector, for the average person,

01:34 what will they see? What events will they see in the area?

01:37 Well, it's interesting you say people don't work in the sector,

01:39 because one of the points about today is you might not think you work in the tech sector,

01:43 but I bet you're using digital in your job at work.

01:46 So if you're, so lots more people are affected by tech, then maybe they think they're in the sector.

01:51 That's one of the points. But what they'd actually see is they'd see a number of venues across the region.

01:56 So in Wolverhampton, it might be the university, it might be the civic halls, it might be a big factory like this.

02:00 It might be some of our wonderful startups in the tech sector here.

02:03 It might be companies on the innovation corridor, for example.

02:06 They would actually be hosting events.

02:08 There'd probably be a central place for that as well,

02:11 where some of the sort of high profile speakers, demonstrations would occur.

02:15 But it's actually like a sort of a very lively conference,

02:20 which would happen in lots of venues across the West Midlands.

02:24 And you talk about influential speakers.

02:26 Have you got anybody in mind who you'd like to see?

02:28 Oh, well, of course, I would like to see Bill Gates, wouldn't I?

02:32 We all would fire really high.

02:34 But there's a point, the underlying point here, Mark, is about us being ambitious.

02:38 So let's just think we already have the fastest growing tech sector in the UK worth £15 billion. Huge.

02:43 We just had the news yesterday of 22% increase in the number of new tech registrations.

02:48 We're seeing how tech's affecting all of these companies.

02:51 And we know we can put on brilliant conferences here.

02:54 That's what the West Midlands is famous for.

02:56 We know we can put on brilliant events like the Commonwealth Games.

02:59 So this is all about ambition, really.

03:02 We don't want to settle for a few people like me, you know, local politicians.

03:06 We want to really aim high, an international event to put us at the centre of the globe.

03:10 You've given the figure, is it £15.3 billion so far?

03:14 Yes.

03:15 How does that compare with, say, London?

03:17 We're behind London, of course, but it's the growth that's important.

03:20 What is the value?

03:22 The value's about ten times in London.

03:24 About ten times.

03:25 We're about a fifth of the population of London.

03:27 Yes. So tech is much stronger in London.

03:30 But if you look at where, so we're coming from a lower base, that's absolutely right.

03:34 But part of my job is to identify where the real potential is in the future.

03:40 And because we've got to this position of the fastest growing, and we also, by the way,

03:43 have the biggest tech conference outside London.

03:48 It's called Birmingham Tech Week.

03:49 We want to obviously make it West Midlands-wide.

03:51 But again, we're playing to an emerging strength here.

03:55 This is already something that's going well, and we can put sort of rocket fuel behind it.

03:59 How far afield will people come from to see these events?

04:02 All over the world. All over the world.

04:04 People travel literally from every corner of the world to Austin, Texas.

04:08 We want to say we're the European alternative to that.

04:12 Have you set a budget here which is likely to cost?

04:14 Well, the key point about this, like most conferences, is actually they make profit.

04:19 So it's not a big drain on council tax.

04:21 Everyone knows the way that I run the combined authority.

04:23 We haven't charged citizens a penny, and neither would we for this.

04:27 We might need to subsidise it in the first year to get it off the ground,

04:30 but very clearly we have done first workings on it,

04:33 and this would in time be something that washes its face, no subsidy.

04:38 Because you charge, like any conference, you charge exhibitors,

04:41 you charge ticket entry price for certain things.

04:43 So that's not a difficult thing to do.

04:45 Presumably you must have some figures here.

04:46 You looked at how much it will cost to put it on and how much you'll bring in from it.

04:49 And it depends on the scale that you do for the first year, yeah.

04:51 But I'm not going to go through all the maths publicly yet.

04:54 But yeah, of course we've done all that, our business case for it.

04:57 And of course the evidence is we already run in the region Birmingham Tech Week,

05:01 which has grown substantially, and actually that proves as well

05:05 that you can do these things and break even.

05:07 And what's it, I mean, OK, you don't want to give the figures in terms of the mathematics of it,

05:11 but what sort of, just give me an idea of the scale of it, how much is it likely to be,

05:15 to cost in terms of the cost of the onigis and the people coming and things such as that?

05:20 Well, we don't pay for the people, we pay for the guests,

05:22 but we wouldn't pay for all the visitors who come.

05:24 They have to do that in the ticket price.

05:26 But the first, and it would gain in scale,

05:30 but we're talking about initially in the tens of millions do the whole thing,

05:35 not, and that would all be covered.

05:39 It will be covered, critically.

05:41 And so the other side, five years, how much would you expect to add to the economy?

05:44 Yeah, this is the really crucial point.

05:46 I'll just give you one stat which will make you think about,

05:49 one test match at Edgbaston is worth £20 million to the local economy.

05:55 It would be exactly the same if we chose one wonderful gig at the Civic Halls, it's worth a lot.

06:01 And our visitor economy worth £14 billion.

06:04 So what comes out of this, again, if you look at the Austin thing,

06:07 it is hundreds of millions of, actually they would say dollars, that's come in for doing this.

06:12 So this is a real stimulus to the hospitality sector as well.

06:16 So yeah, it's big scale for them.

06:18 Yeah.

06:19 Looking at some figures this morning,

06:22 unemployment in this region, particularly Birmingham is the worst in Wolverhampton,

06:27 it's half as much again as the national average in Wolverhampton.

06:31 That's right.

06:32 Why do you think we are struggling in this area at the moment in terms of unemployment?

06:36 So we can see this two ways.

06:40 So the positive side here is we're actually creating a lot more jobs,

06:46 100,000 jobs over the last two years.

06:48 But the reason that that has not pulled down unemployment,

06:52 it's actually still considerably better than it's been for most years in the whole sort of period from 2008.

07:03 So although we're out of line with the country, that is right,

07:06 but actually by our historical performance, it's relatively strong at the moment.

07:10 And job creation is good.

07:12 But one of the reasons for this is actually that a lot of young people are coming onto the market.

07:17 You see this is a very young workforce.

07:19 So even though we're creating jobs fast,

07:21 it's not keeping up with the pace at which new people are coming onto the market.

07:25 So this all needs to be about new job creation, new skills, of course,

07:29 and this sort of idea will help us in this in particular,

07:32 because the tech sector is where obviously the jobs are very strong.

07:35 Where do you see us being the big growth areas of the next 10 years?

07:39 So there's a number.

07:41 What we did, as you probably remember, we set what we called our plan for growth.

07:46 And the plan for growth identified about eight areas

07:49 which we thought we were really very strong regionally and we would grow fast.

07:53 So just to call some of those out, obviously advanced manufacturing,

07:57 that's employing more people than previously, and this is a wonderful example of this here.

08:02 Secondarily, the whole sort of logistics area, we see how very strong that is for us.

08:06 The medical and life science area is very strong.

08:09 Professional services is very strong, and that's where inward investment is really coming in.

08:14 Aerospace, particularly Wolverhampton, is strong.

08:17 That little, not huge cluster, but very, very, very important to us, good jobs in that area as well.

08:23 So a number of key areas that we've identified that we can do well,

08:27 and construction and future house building is another such area as well.

08:30 So we've picked a number of niches that we think will do very well,

08:33 a number of sectors is a better word, and then cross-cutting it all

08:37 is this issue of how technology is changing all of them,

08:40 hence why we really want to get behind technology today.

08:42 So we've seen in recent years also the problem has been in productivity,

08:45 and what sort of things can be done to tackle the productivity puzzle, if you like?

08:49 So our productivity is going up slowly but steadily,

08:53 so it is at least a positive story around productivity here.

08:56 And the most important thing, there's two ingredients to driving productivity forward.

09:01 The first is business investment.

09:03 Again, why is this story here so very impressive?

09:06 Because you actually drive up productivity as you invest in technology,

09:09 and again the tech sector comes out, and the second is making sure your workforce is best skilled.

09:14 So one of the things we've really been working on over the last few years

09:17 is to improve the skills and qualifications of the workforce,

09:20 and we've now got the best qualified workforce we have ever had,

09:24 135,000 people trained in the last couple of years in new skills.

09:30 It still lags behind the rest of the country, I don't know if you see.

09:33 Yes, it does, but it does lag behind the national average,

09:38 it depends which measure you take.

09:40 You are right, Mark, because I often talk about people qualified to level three,

09:43 we're now at 59% and that is a touch behind the rest of the country,

09:46 but the gap is closing critically.

09:48 So we were well behind.

09:50 The gap is closing and no one's taking anything away from the progress that we have made.

09:54 Some of the other measures, if you actually look at school attainment, for example,

09:59 you mentioned Birmingham was the highest, they've actually improved their school performance there.

10:03 Some areas of the black country similarly as well.

10:06 And if you look at the proportion of people from here going to university, that's improving as well.

10:10 So on some of the measures we're actually nicely positioned against the national average,

10:14 but that level three qualification, which I often talk about, we are still behind the national average.

10:19 Of course, the Centre for Cities produced a study early in the year which said the West Midlands region

10:26 had the economy continued on the trajectory that it had done before 2010,

10:32 the average household had been £10,000 a year better off.

10:35 But that's a lovely piece of research, isn't it?

10:38 But that denies the financial crisis, it denies COVID, it denies Brexit,

10:43 if that was positive or negative, it denies the energy crisis.

10:46 So really, that's pretty fanciful, isn't it?

10:49 And in terms, obviously with Jaguar Land Rover today, has the decision to put back the switch to net zero,

10:57 what's the impact would that have on companies such as this?

11:00 Well, JLR should speak for themselves on that, of course, rather than me speak for them.

11:07 But they were relatively silent on the decision that the government took.

11:14 And what you have seen here is they're actually in a good position,

11:18 because they're still obviously producing combustion engines, they're producing hybrid cars,

11:22 and they're doing their technology for new electric vehicles.

11:25 The brilliant news is that Wolverhampton will be the electric drive unit factory.

11:32 So rather than a combustion engine, the electric drive units will be made here as well.

11:36 So the good news is that both are going to be done.

11:38 And in terms of jobs, they're committing, I think, to all the jobs in Wolverhampton.

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