It will take more than £600m a year to boost UK industrial competitiveness | Nils Pratley

Bics fix accepts nose-bleed energy bills are a structural problem but pretends they are only an issue for a narrow section of industry It is “bold action” to boost UK competitiveness, claimed the government. Not everybody shared that assessment of the British industrial competitiveness scheme (Bics), the long-awaited plan to cut electricity bills for UK manufacturers by up to 25% – or, at least, to cut them for a subset of firms that are aligned with the eight chosen sectors of the “modern” ind…