If I were Prime Minister: I'd put the creative industries at the top of the agenda

Our series in the run-up to the General Election – 100 days, 100 contributors, but no politicians – continues with the author and historian

Remember when the phrase "the creative industries" was in wide circulation? It has now all but disappeared from political discourse - probably because politicians of all persuasions seem scared of being publicly associated with anything "creative" - except of course where accounting is concerned.

Although the phrase was originally intended to describe "a whole industrial sector", it actually bundles together a diffuse group of industries, each with a different structure (fashion, software, product design, the media, graphics, the record industry, gaming, etc).

But the latest research shows that a bold "Creative Industries Policy" is urgently needed to optimise the key factors - infrastructure, taxation, skills, access to finance, enlightened procurement by the public sector, investment incentives, stabilisation - which will create an environment for such industries really to take off.

Whereas Financial Services employ roughly the same number of people as they did in the late 1990s, and as contributors to our exports their contribution has been in sharp decline since 2008, the creative industries are the fastest-growing sector of the economy, with rising employment to match. Together, they currently amount to a couple of points below manufacturing as contributors to GDP, and only a few below financial services - and yet you certainly wouldn't know this from current public pronouncements.

As Prime Minister, I would put a "Creative Industries Policy" at the head of the agenda, and in the longer term reduce the over-reliance in our economy on unproductive Financial Services.

Often the creative industries are set in opposition to manufacturing and engineering. This is wrong. The connections between the "old"economy and the "new" are crucial to all our futures. Where manufacturing is concerned, the mantra "we'll write it, they'll print it" has been mindlessly chanted for far too long and as a mind-set has indirectly led to a dramatic decline in Britain's manufacturing position - from 4th to 9th in world charts, and falling.

Most of our large manufacturing companies (60-70 per cent) - those employing over 1000 people - are now in foreign ownership. But we still have a very wide variety of energetic small and medium-sized manufacturing companies - and they, too, need support with infrastructure, access to finance, energy costs etc.

An "Industrial Policy for Manufacturing" is urgently needed, up there with the creative industries at the head of the agenda. We don't seem to have such a policy at the moment. This will have to include extending STEM subjects in schools, universities - and the research communities - to embrace design, which James Dyson has called "The silent D in STEM", and to encourage partnerships between designers, manufacturers and engineers.

I once had the opportunity to put this to Lord Browne - he of the Review on the basis of which Higher Education was restructured at the beginning of this last parliament - and he replied "what a good idea - what shall we do about it?". What shall WE do about it? Well, as Prime Minister I would indeed do something about manufacturing and design - and in the process would re-introduce "the balance of trade" as a prime measure of both economic performance and government effectiveness. You have probably noticed that that, too, has disappeared from political discourse. I wonder why.

While we are on Higher and Further Education, I would encourage a serious debate about their nature and purposes within contemporary society - and whether or not HE/FE should be a public responsibility. This debate never happened after the reception and amendment of the Browne Review.

Everyone now knows that most student loans will never be repaid - so the cost to the public will if anything be more than it was before - but no-one, it seems, is prepared publicly to admit it. Or to admit surprise that so many universities decided to charge the maximum allowable fee.

The marketisation of Higher Education is the most significant change in the principles of public finding to have happened in my lifetime - it has gone much, much further than the NHS - and it apparently happened without anyone paying attention. Time for a public debate, at the very least.

Finally, as Roosevelt realised in the mid-1930s, and as Maynard Keynes realised in 1945, times of recession are precisely the times when the arts need the most support not the least - for all sorts of reasons including national reputation, morale-boosting,reminders of why a country is worth living in, tourism and 'recording the recession'.

"When our spirits were at a low ebb", said Keynes, that was the time to put public money into the arts. We have forgotten this lesson. Apparently, the sole reason for living and working in a particular country is now its tax system. As Prime Minister, I would move the arts centre-stage again and encourage my Ministers to be less embarrassed about them. They represent everything politics and red-top journalism aren't - and we need them more than ever.

Oh, and if we leave the EU, I am emigrating - which I suppose will rule me out as Prime Minister.

Sir Christopher Frayling's latest book is The Yellow Peril: Dr Fu Manchu & The Rise of Chinaphobia