Yes – and what IS "the one thing"....?

The Government has given us a budget for growth. Enterprise Zones, tax relief on start-up investment, cuts in corporation tax, even rules for planners “to prioritise growth and jobs”. Yet is this the right stuff?

The London Thames Gateway is Britain’s greatest business opportunity for a wide range of sectors – low carbon technologies, creative & digital media, hotels & leisure, logistics, finance & business services – yet, under-performance remains. With 30% of London’s population, east London has only 19% of London’s businesses, and (outside Canary Wharf) less than 2% of London’s foreign direct investment.

This isn’t logical. Research by Oxford Economics indicates that east London could provide an additional £21.4bn to London’s economy from existing businesses, new start-ups and inward investors – and to get this we need to improve in business attraction, formation, retention and performance.

So – what should we be doing? More precisely, what would you do?

Imagine for a moment, you are the Chancellor. It’s March 2012, a year from now, and things have gone rather better than planned. The economy is picking up a little, the country is looking forward to the Olympic & Paralympic Games, and someone in the Treasury has just found £100 million at the back of a draw somewhere (the way they do, from time to time). What an opportunity!

You can do whatever you like with this money. It’s new money, unexpected money, and you can spend it any way you want without jeopardising any other policy, programme or initiative. You can take ten years to spend it, and no-one will be hurt or disadvantaged. It’s the chance of a lifetime – a chance to try something that’s never been done before – an economic growth initiative that isn’t driven by politics.

And so you cast your eye around the country. You see how important London is for the UK economy, you see how important east London is for the future growth of the capital, and now you know where to spend the money. Not easy, though, to know quite where to focus. Grants and allowances? Skills? New technology development? Whilst £100m is a lot, it's still not enough to splurge on pointless, short-term, make-work schemes.

Gateway to London is giving London’s best economists the chance to decide what the Chancellor should do to make sure that east London hits that £21.4bn growth target. We’re inviting economists from the Bank of England, the CBI, the capital’s foremost business schools and economics editors at all the major media to give us their view on the one policy that would make the biggest difference to east London’s growth. And we’re giving them until June to decide.

Let’s see whether the Chancellor and the experts agree – given £100m and ten years to spend it, what is the one thing that you would you do, to drive growth in east London’s economy?

Give us your answers – and stay tuned for the answers from the experts.....

What does it take to create a job?

No, I mean – what does it really take?

We have about 120,000 unemployed people in the London Thames Gateway. We also have about 120,000 businesses. If every one of those businesses were to create just one job, we could banish unemployment in east London.

Okay, that’s maybe a mite simplistic. Whichever way you look at it, though, if every business in east London created just one job, that could provide employment opportunity for most of our people.

Of course, it’s not enough to know the need – to get the jobs, we also need to fulfil that need. So, is there anyone who could say “If you tell us what you need to create just one job, we’ll provide it, or help you get it”?

Well, yes, actually. Including Government departments, councils, enterprise agencies and the rest of us, there must be 30 organisations in east London to help business do better. And that’s without counting all the private sector consultants and advisers who do that stuff anyway for money.

Some of those organisations are already doing good work. Just not enough of them. Otherwise, we’d have no unemployment, right? If the 120,000 businesses could tell us exactly what they need to create just one job each, then the great army of business support ought to be able to find it.

So, here is my two-fold challenge for east London....

Firstly, I challenge those 120,000 businesses to describe exactly what it would take for each of them to create just one job. And I don’t mean a grant – I’m talking about what would generate sufficient profitability to justify paying one more permanent employee. More sales? Lower costs? Tighter credit management?

Secondly, I challenge the great business support network to fulfil those business needs. And I don’t mean writing a strategy or forming a committee or pointing people to a website. I mean sitting down with a business person in their office or factory or home, listening to them, and giving them information, advice and assistance that makes an immediate difference to their business.

We may not be able to create 120,000 jobs in east London in a single year or even three or four. Yet, to get the kind of private sector job creation we need to lift us back into business growth, we need to get real and get moving.

So let’s do it. Let’s get every business to take the East London Job Challenge right now, and tell us what they need to create just one job. And then let’s help them do it.