Broadcaster Evan Davis gives inaugural lecture as OU Professor

In his inaugural lecture as Visiting Professor at The Open University Business School, the presenter of Radio Four's Today programme said economists are currently polarised between those who think austerity is being pursued too far and too fast, and those who think we need to maintain austerity in order to get growth. But this argument is not the most important one.

Instead we should be focusing on how the UK economy has been re-oriented towards different sectors over the last 30 years, and whether this re-orientation process has gone too far.

"Not everybody is going to be in the creative industries, a pharmaceutical laboratory worker, a university teacher or a skilled engineer," he said. "And there is a huge regional mismatch between where the old jobs were, and the new jobs are."

Evan built on arguments in his recent TV series Made in Britain, one of a number of OU/BBC series which Evan has presented. They include Business Nightmares, about commercial disasters, and Radio Four's The Bottom Line, a business discussion series which also has a huge international TV audience on the BBC World Channel.

Hear Evan's lecture Reflections on the British economy in full, and explore further, on OpenLearn.