Why can’t Britain finance the factories it says it wants to build?

The UK has some of the deepest capital markets in the world, yet industrial businesses still struggle to raise the patient, long-term capital needed to expand. That problem is not new. In 1931 a committee was established by the government to assess the UK economy and finance sector, amongst its findings was a structural gap in access to capital for small and medium sized industrial businesses, it became known as the Macmillan Gap - named after the committee's chair. By 1945 Britain had created a new institution, the Industrial and Commercial Finance Corporation, to try to close it.

In this episode, Rob explores what that history can teach us now. Why do viable industrial investments still fall between conventional bank lending and growth capital? What role should public finance play where demand is real but uncertain? And what would it take to rebuild the industrial intelligence, flexible products and patience needed to turn capital into factories?

From ICFC and Oxford Instruments to today’s public finance institutions, this is an episode about the gap between having money in the system and being able to deploy it into productive industrial capacity.

How We Build Britain is independently produced. The views expressed are Rob Gilbert's own and do not represent Baringa, Great British Energy or the UK Government.

If you have questions, comments or suggestions - please send us a mail

Britain's public sector spends close to £400 billion a year (with £90bn of government contracts). So are we really failing to buy British?

In this episode I look at the evidence, which suggests that the majority of direct public sector procurement spending goes to suppliers classified as British. That figure comes with real limitations, but it points at a deeper problem. Buying from a British company is not necessarily the same thing as building British industrial capability.

Using Alstom's train factory in Derby, Britain's offshore wind supply chain and Germany's deeper manufacturing ecosystem, I look at where industrial value actually sits, and why the nationality of a company's owner may matter less than the location of its factories, skills, engineering and suppliers.

The episode considers:

• Why procurement alone cannot substitute for industrial strategy
• How public demand can support investment and supply chain development
• Why rebuilding domestic capability may initially cost more
• The distinction between industrial policy and permanent protectionism
• How Britain can build more productive relationships with international partners

The central question is not simply whether public contracts go to British suppliers. It is whether Britain is building lasting, internationally competitive capability with the money it spends.

This podcast is independently produced. I am not speaking on behalf of the UK Government, Great British Energy or Baringa.

If you have questions, comments or suggestions - please send us a mail

In 2018, Britain started running short of beer.

The cause was not breweries, hops or malt. It was carbon dioxide, and one of the reasons for the shortage was that fertiliser plants had stopped making fertiliser.

That strange connection is the starting point for this episode of How We Build Britain.

From Billingham on the Tees to Bishopton in Renfrewshire, this is a story about the industrial foundations beneath everyday life: the chemicals, materials, skills and production capabilities that connect food, manufacturing and national security.

It is also a story about what happens when commercially rational decisions gradually remove capabilities whose wider value is much harder to measure, and why Britain is now investing to rebuild some of them.

In this episode, Rob explores the connections between beer, bread and bombs, and asks a bigger question for UK reindustrialisation:

How do we decide which industrial capabilities matter before we discover their value by losing them?

How We Build Britain is independently produced. The views expressed are Rob Gilbert’s own and do not represent Baringa, Great British Energy or the UK Government.

If you have questions, comments or suggestions - please send us a mail