Partner Article

UK government should follow Obama's lead

The government must improve the way it communicates its economic recovery plans, according to UK business chiefs.

The CBI have said that the government’s current plans lack a coherent strategy and timeline, and have left businesses and the public confused.

Richard Lambert, CBI Director-General, said the government should take a lesson from the Obama administration’s approach and set up a website to explain in detail the importance, timeframes and effects of recovery initiatives, and to track their progress.

Mr Lambert said: “The government appears to have been fighting a series of forest fires rather than building a platform for economic recovery. There’s little sense of a coherent strategy about what’s happened to date.

“What is needed is a better sense of the big picture: an overview of what has been put in place and of what each initiative is intended to achieve, together with the dates at which each one can be expected to kick in.

“The website unveiled by the Obama administration offers an excellent template. The Prime Minister should ask Alistair Darling and Lord Mandelson to click on to www.recovery.gov, and to produce something similar for the UK in the very near future.”

www.recovery.gov includes charts that break down how the money provided by recovery legislation will be distributed. A map of the country identifies the number of jobs the legislation is expected to create in each state. There is also a rolling time line to show when each programme will take effect.

Mr Lambert said: “Properly communicated, a similar website for the UK will give the public and businesses a much clearer idea of what is actually being done to get the economy going. “It will be an important step towards restoring the confidence that, more than anything else, is what is needed in our country right now.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .