Industrial Strategy 2025

This week saw the Government launch its Industrial Strategy – our Head of Policy Stephanie Baxter provides commentary.

To successfully deliver the ambitions of this modern Industrial Strategy, the government must strike a fine balance between turbocharging emerging sectors such as AI, alongside bolstering the resilience and stability of existing industry.

Key sector plans, along with the recommendations set out in the technology adoption review, will be critical to driving growth to 2035 and beyond.

Global Talent Taskforce

Successfully delivering this ambitious modern industrial strategy will both rely on and attract some of the best talent from around the world. We cannot effectively tackle the skills shortage in key industries if we are limiting opportunities for growth by failing to attract a diverse pool of engineers and technicians into key sectors.

That is why the Global Talent Taskforce, backed with investment to reduce the costs and barriers to attract skilled workers and businesses from around the world, will play a crucial role alongside developing the domestic skills pipeline.

Clean Power Sector Plan

The Clean Power Sector Plan delivers a solid foundation for decarbonising and strengthening the resilience of the UK’s energy system. We look forward to seeing the forthcoming roadmaps and strategies that will underpin this, along with further details of the Clean Power 2030 plan and the role of hydrogen in the future energy mix.

It is right that the Plan recognises the urgent need to upgrade the UK’s sustainability skills base. The IET’s 2025 Skills Survey found that technical/specialist sustainability skills is ranked as the most difficult skill engineering employers struggle to recruit for, whilst also being cited as the most important skillset needed for businesses to decarbonise by 2050 – with more than a third of employers saying that their organisation currently lacks the skills to meet this target.

The adoption of new technologies will also be critical to decarbonising the UK’s energy system, so we welcome the appointment of Lucy Yu as the government’s Clean Energy AI Champion to drive the adoption of AI across the sector, and look forward to supporting her in this new role.

Digital Technologies Sector Plan

The IET welcomes the measures already announced to ensure that the UK is able to develop and adopt new technologies to drive innovation and boost resilience and security.

The Cyber Growth Action Plan can unlock innovation, create jobs and help SMEs scale with the right technical and managerial skills as part of a wider cultural shift in cyber awareness to protect our economy, businesses and public services.

We look forward to working with the government on developing a world-leading Cyber Resilience Bill.

Advanced Manufacturing Sector Plan

The Advanced Manufacturing Sector Plan rightly highlights the opportunities for growth and resilience through decarbonisation and digitalisation. We are glad that the Plan follows our recommendation to build resilience in industry through reducing supply-side barriers. We also welcome the focus on automation, which was cited by engineering employers in the 2025 IET Skills Survey as the digital skill most important for business growth over the next five years.

We welcome the plans set out to develop a digitally literate and inclusive workforce, both through apprenticeship routes into careers and targeted upskilling and reskilling programmes to enhance existing workers’ skills sets, with specific support for SMEs to adopt new technologies. Innovative thinking was cited in our 2025 Skills Survey as the most important skill for business growth over the next five years, which is why it is crucial that the education system develops innovative, capable workers who can adapt and continue learning as new technologies emerge.

Technology Adoption Review

We welcome the Technology Adoption Review’s emphasis on taking an holistic approach to deliver the cross-government coordination that will be needed to support digital transformation across the UK economy.

The Review rightly highlights the information gap between technology development and adoption as one of the biggest barriers to a flourishing UK digital ecosystem, although must make a clearer distinction between the challenges facing start-ups as distinct from those facing scale-ups.

Bridging this gap will be critical to developing effective pathways for growth, and there are a number of actionable recommendations in the report to facilitate better knowledge transfer.

As part of this, the government must ensure that as well as training workers on how to harness new technologies, they also understand their limitations and are trained how to use them safely and responsibly. Empowering workers with key skills such as innovative thinking (which was ranked by engineering employers as the number one skill needed for business growth over the next five years) will support the cyber cultural change across all levels of industry.

About the IET

• We inspire, inform and influence the global engineering community to engineer a better world.
• We are a diverse home for engineering and technology intelligence throughout the world. This breadth and depth means we are uniquely placed to help the sector progress society.
• We want to build the profile of engineering and technology to change outdated perceptions and tackle the skills gap. This includes encouraging more women to become engineers and growing the number of engineering apprentices.
• Interview opportunities are available with our spokespeople from a range of engineering and technology disciplines including cyber-security, energy, engineering skills, innovation, manufacturing, technology, transport and diversity in engineering.
• For more information, visit The IET.

Media enquiries to:

Rebecca Gillick
External Communications Manager
E: rgillick@theiet.org