Senior individuals from business, academia and civil society comprise the Industrial Strategy Council, led by the Chief Economist of the Bank of England, Business Secretary Greg Clark announced yesterday.

A full meeting of the independent Industrial Strategy Council took place yesterday afternoon at Number 10. Members agreed on how they will assess the government’s progress on the commitments set out in the Industrial Strategy. They were joined by the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and the Business Secretary.

The Industrial Strategy Council members are:

  • Andy Haldane (Chairman) - Chief Economist, Bank of England
  • Dame Kate Barker - Commissioner of the National Infrastructure Commission and recently Chairwoman of the Industrial Strategy Commission
  • Emma Bridgewater - Founder of Emma Bridgewater Ceramics
  • Professor Diane Coyle - Bennett Professor of Public Policy at the University of Cambridge
  • Jayne-Anne Gadhia - Ex-Chief Executive, Virgin Money. Member of the Scottish Business Taskforce
  • Christine Gaskell - Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) Chair, Cheshire and Warrington
  • Rupert Harrison - Managing Director of BlackRock
  • Dame Vivian Hunt - Managing Partner UK and Ireland, McKinsey, Chair of CBI London Council
  • Dame Rotha Johnston – Chair of Northern Ireland Screen
  • Professor Juergen Maier - Chief Executive of Siemens
  • Sir Paul Marshall - Co-founder and Chairman, Marshall Wace LLP
  • Sir Charlie Mayfield - Chairman, John Lewis Partnership, Chair of Be the Business
  • Lady Nicola Mendelsohn - Advertising executive; Vice-President for Europe, the Middle East and Africa for Facebook. Non-Executive Director of Diageo
  • Archie Norman - Chair, Marks & Spencer. Formerly Chief Executive of Asda, Chair of ITV, McKinsey Consultant and Director at GEEST, Railtrack and Kingfisher.
  • Hayley Parsons - Welsh entrepreneur and investor, and Founder of GoCompare
  • Roy Rickhuss - General Secretary of Community and member of the Executive Council of the General Federation of Trade Unions and the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation
  • Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell - President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Manchester and Professor of Physiology, Co-chair of the Council for Science and Technology and past President of the Royal Society of Biology
  • Professor Jennifer Rubin - Executive Chairwoman of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), Professor of Public Policy at Kings College London
  • Rohan Silva - Co-founder of Second Home, Senior Visiting Fellow at LSE Cities
  • Matthew Taylor - Chief Executive, Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA).

Prime Minister Theresa May said: "Our modern Industrial Strategy is key to building a successful economy that works for everyone and creating high-quality jobs across the UK.

"This Council gathers some of the most influential figures in business, academia, and civil society. Together, they will share their expertise and skills to measure the progress of our strategy and ensure it is boosting people’s wages and improving productivity of British businesses."

Haldane added: "I look forward to working with these leading business men and women, investors, economists, and academics to provide impartial and unbiased evaluations of the government’s progress in delivering on the Industrial Strategy. They will bring valuable collective insight into the challenge that the government has set for us.

"At our inaugural meeting we developed our workplan that will deliver strong evaluation metrics and a programme of activity that will challenge and support this critical economic policy as it is implemented."

The Industrial Strategy, published in November 2017, is backing businesses to create high-paid, highly-skilled jobs in every part of the UK and stimulate growth in the UK economy.

Plans to establish an Industrial Strategy Council followed consultation with businesses, universities and other stakeholders who said that it needed to have clear measures of success and an ongoing mechanism to evaluate progress.

The Council will review the Industrial Strategy's impact to date and its contribution to UK economic growth. Its responsibilities include:

  • Recommending a series of success measures for the implementation of the Industrial Strategy
  • Commenting on delivery against these measures and their contribution to UK economic growth
  • Commenting on ways to improve the measurement of success, particularly in terms of productivity and the better use of data across government
  • Commenting on the effectiveness of how the impact of existing programmes that contribute to the goals of the Industrial Strategy are evaluated and make recommendations about how to improve evaluation where necessary
  • Publishing a regular public report assessing progress on implementation of the Industrial Strategy against success measures and on ways to improve measurement and evaluation.

It will convene at least three times a year and will agree its annual work programme and priorities with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and HM Treasury.