Peston calls for manufacturing to be a focus of recovery at the BCO Annual Conference 2009
Speaking on Thursday 21 May at the British Council for Offices (BCO) Annual Conference, BBC Business Editor Robert Peston called for a renewed emphasis on high-value manufacturing to rebalance the economony during its recovery.
He told the cream of the commercial property industry, gathered in Edinburgh, that the private sector should assume more of the burden of driving recovery to relieve the public sector, which has been propping up the banking system.Peston predicted that the UK is "not through to the end of the story. With banks so dependent on securitised credit we need to ask whether we can get by without it. Taxpayers cannot stand in the market forever." However, he said that he believed the UK economy would see a return to growth from the end of 2010, although that would not mean a return to "the golden years of 1992-2007 where we saw 2.5-3% growth year-in, year-out".
Talking of the UK's system of financial regulation, Peston challenged the notion that it had failed because it was too light touch, saying that the defects were in fact much more fundamental as the system was in fact "based on really bad science". Echoing the tenor of the current debate about MPs' expenses, Peston lamented that the UK had created a "compliance culture in which people didn't stop to ask 'is this the right deal' in a fundamental way."
The BCO Annual Conference brings together the BCO's high-powered membership - a mix of senior figures in organisations responsible for designing, building, owning, managing and occupying offices in the UK.
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