Whilst speaking to business leaders at Salford's Lowry arts centre during, as part of the Labour Cabinet’s tour around the UK, Lord Peter Mandelson has today approved a £35m programme to support new businesses in the North West, with the aim of creating 23,000 jobs over the next five years, as reported by the MEN. The start-up programme will be run through Business Link Northwest, the region's business support gateway. The programme’s funding is coming from the Northwest Regional Development Agency (£26.6m) and the European Regional Development Fund (£8.4m). The programme aims to create some 12,700 new businesses and 23,000 jobs in the North West.
According to the BBC Mandelson said, “We cannot and must not fail now to invest in our future…We will not repeat the mistakes made in previous recessions of retrenchment - stop-go policies in public investment have reduced Britain's competitiveness over many decades”.
The MEN added that he said, “This new funding will help entrepreneurs in the north west to get new enterprises off the ground and access the support they need to grow and flourish. Nurturing and protecting start-ups and young businesses through this downturn will lead us into the upturn that will follow”.
Therefore Mandelson has made a clear message regarding his views on how to turn the current economic downturn into an upturn: We need to invest in the future, rather than sit back and wait for the economic downturn to end.
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