October 2019

| 48 | October 2019 www.smartmachinesandfactories.com | INTERVIEWS & REPORTS | projects”. They say that the Government should seek to ensure that the UK has at least associate membership of EU research projects and can collaborate effectively with neighbouring states. The MPs believe that the Government’s optimism on the impact of automation on UK jobs is justified only if it works with industry to ensure that the most at-risk sectors and professions have the support they need to manage this transition. They recommend that the Government works with industry to identify the sectors and skills most at risk from automation and develops an action plan for how this transition will be managed. The potential gains that automation can bring for the UK economy cannot be left to chance, the report concludes. Instead, the Government needs to bring forward a strategy to help businesses, workers and researchers to use the transition to deliver a change to how we live and work. If managed well, this transition to a more automated British workplace should make businesses more productive, improve the supply of high- quality jobs, and support working people to have more leisure time. If the transition is managed badly, entire groups and regions could be left behind, British businesses could find themselves uncompetitive, SMEs will continue to form a long tail of unproductive businesses, and academics will be working in isolation attempting to catch-up with other nations’ technologies. According to the MPs, the Government needs to take both the opportunities and risks of automation “more seriously … than it has to date”. It should not do so in isolation. Instead, it should collaborate with all those who want to harness automation to boost productivity and living standards, and it should not delay in doing so. They recommend that the Government urgently brings together employers, workers, academia and automation developers to design a UK robot strategy on how it plans to promote and manage the transition to a more automated world of work. Let’s hope that this important report is not lost in the furore surrounding Brexit. * You can download the report from http://b.link/cmb630