The new Government’s dash for growth could be impressive or naïve - Andy Brown

At first sight that seems like quite a sensible strategy. It is only when you start to ask questions about how that growth is achieved, what it costs to get it and how it can be sustained that things start to get complex.

Growing the income of people who are poor is obviously a good thing. Growing the consumption of energy and raw materials, dumping more waste into the environment and using up even more of the land needed by wildlife is rather less so.

The important thing about going for growth is to be clear about what kind of growth you are targeting and what price you are prepared to pay to secure it.

The last government thought it could achieve a spectacular turbo charging of the British economy by creating a network of so called free enterprise zones and by establishing ‘freeports’ some of which were many miles from the sea.

The signs of extra success for British business emerging from those efforts has so far proved elusive. The evidence of opaque and highly questionable deals being done without proper public scrutiny has been much clearer.

Giving extra powers to mayors to buy land using compulsory purchase orders and sell it off cheaply with limited scrutiny is likely to prove a better strategy for fostering dubious behaviour amongst those who hold public office than one for modernising British industry. Any employer who needs to dodge legislation over workers’ rights and environmental standards is not likely to prove an exemplar at growing the kind of business that this country needs.

Astonishingly the new government has, as yet, not announced the reversal of the free enterprise zone strategy and even more astonishingly the new office holders have refused to allow the National Audit Office to conduct a full independent investigation into the deals which have generated so many questions.

Indeed, rather than challenge the theory that dumping regulations and giving developers a free hand produces genuine improvements the new government seems to be doubling down on it and making concessions that even the last lot weren’t prepared to stomach.

One of the key planks of this government’s drive for growth is a desire to see a lot more housebuilding. All well and good if that means renovating and improving neglected parts of our region and it involves building what is needed where it is needed.

Rather less good if it involves a determination to weaken planning controls and allow much more house building on green fields. Communities need a say in what gets built locally. What many are now facing is a near doubling of the targets for the number of buildings that need to be granted planning permission accompanied by a loss of local control over the nature of what is built.

There is much to be gained from achieving secure and sustainable growth of quality businesses that help to rebalance our economy away from its over reliance on financial services and on London.

Yorkshire needs good quality investment in science and industry that links to our strong network of cutting edge university research departments.

There is a lot less to be gained from developing another set of giant online trading warehouses that provide low wage employment.

Investment needs choosing carefully. Spending over £40bn on one nuclear power station that will require electricity prices to be elevated for over 30 years is not necessarily a good way to get growth. Particularly if the taxpayer will eventually have to pay a massive clean up programme.

Choosing to carry on drilling for oil and gas that will have to be pumped out for another 30 years in order to make the investment pay back financially is not a great way of adapting our economy to the unavoidable need to adjust to an era when we have to manage without consuming that oil.

We learned a lot from Liz Truss about what can go wrong when a government opts for a naïve dash for growth without careful thought about the consequences.

It would be good if the new government could moderate its own naivety about growth and make sure that whatever growth it creates is sustainable, of high quality and contributes to an improvement in community life and environmental improvement.

Andy Brown is the Green Party councillor for Aire Valley in North Yorkshire.