In all the hubbub about spending our way out of recession, there seems to be one investment idea that’s sadly being overlooked. Curiously, for a Government who believe in ‘education education education’, I’ve not heard it suggested anywhere that the economy could be kick-started with investment in people.

I’d love to know if there was something wrong with this idea. Rather than paying people to dig trenches then fill them in again, or fiddling about with transport links and infrastructure, why not provide something that most of the population of this country feel is provided best at state level – training and education.

The government could pour resources into scholarships in areas where Britain is strong – in particular I would say engineering, technology, design. Fund technical colleges and university places to help us compete on an international level. The British have a strong tradition of engineering brilliance, and even though it gets less press now we’re still at the bleeding edge of semiconductor technology, we have thriving businesses in software development, web and graphic design, CAD and hardware engineering, consumer electronics… 98% of mobile phones, for instance, use British processors (ARM), and the majority of them run the British-designed Symbian Operating System. This is a major area of untapped potential for the British economy and if we’re to invest money, we should be encouraging more growth in these kinds of areas.

Coupled with an investment in technology enterprises which can provide further training and research, we could focus on a really productive sector of our economy and begin to re-envision our place in the world in the same way as was done in the 80’s and 90’s with our financial sector. If we can get enough people with enough skills into one part of the country, we could start seeing huge growth in productive industries.

All of this is ignoring, of course, the inherent dangers of a Keynesian spending splurge which could bankrupt the country. However, if you’re going to do the wrong thing, you should surely try and do the wrong thing in the best way possible?

We’re shortly going to have thousands upon thousands of people claiming unemployment benefits, having lost their jobs, shouldn’t we use our investments to offer these people a chance to learn new skills in productive areas of our economy? It’s a simple case of investing in the future of our country, and providing a new road to prosperity for years to come.