Rachel Reeves will turn around the British economy like Steve Jobs turned around Apple, the technology secretary has argued.
Peter Kyle likened the chancellor to the Apple co-founder who took the tech company from the brink of bankruptcy to become the most valuable in the world.
He argued that an £86 billion injection in science and technology due at the spending review would lead to iPhone-style innovation in Britain and turbocharge growth.
Peter Kyle says police and other services resisting cuts “need to do their bit” to help public finances
JONATHAN BRADY/PA
Reeves is still battling senior cabinet colleagues over cuts to key budgets needed to fund an increase in defence spending and a £30 billion boost to the NHS. She is also expected to increase the budget for schools by £4.5 billion.
Kyle said that the police and other services resisting cuts needed to “do their bit” to help turn around the country. Looser fiscal rules would give Reeves £113 billion a year more borrowing to invest, which she was expected to direct towards infrastructure and research designed to stimulate the economy.
After £40 billion of tax rises in the autumn budget, Kyle said the spending review would allow Reeves to invest “record amounts of money into the innovations of the future.”
“Just bear in mind how Apple turned itself around. When Steve Jobs came back to Apple, they were 90 days from insolvency. That’s the kind of situation that we had when we came into office,” he said. “Now Steve Jobs turned it around by inventing the iMac, moving to a series of products like the iPod.”
He told Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips on Sky News: “Now we’re starting to invest in the vaccine processes of the future. Some of the high-tech solutions that are going to be high growth. We’re investing in our space sector. All these really high, highly innovative sectors.”
Jobs returned to Apple in the mid-1990s and released a series of products over the next 15 years that revolutionised communications and set the company he co-founded on a path to becoming the most valuable in the world.
Apple is worth more than £2 trillion, compared with Britain’s GDP of £3.8 trillion.
Rachel Reeves, right, with Tracy Brabin, the West Yorkshire mayor
Kyle told Times Radio: “We are investing into those key innovations of the future. We know that we cannot break this vicious cycle of high tax and low growth by doing the same as we always have done. We have to innovate our way out of this and we are doing so by investing in those high-growth sectors.”
• What we’d do in Reeves’s shoes — by Hunt, Zahawi and Mel Stride
However, an increase in investment comes alongside a squeeze on day-to-day spending, with Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, still holding out over cuts to the police and Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, over council budgets.
“We expect the police to start embracing the change they need to do, to do their bit for change as well. We are doing our bit,” Kyle told Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg on BBC1.
“You will see the priorities of this government reflected in the spending review, which sets the departmental spending into the long term. But this is a partnership. Yes, the Treasury needs to find more money for those key priorities, but the people delivering them need to do their bit as well.”
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