"CBI chief calls for planned economy.” We knew things were bad but not that bad. Perhaps we really are heading for the worst downturn in 60 years.

Of course, that's not quite what Richard Lambert, Director-General of the CBI, is advocating.

He is urging some element of planning, or at least that some thought be given to the type of economy we want, what the role of manufacturing should be and how business and government can work together to deliver it. His call comes as the Government prepares to unveil its strategy document for manufacturing.

Mr Lambert argues that there is an urgent need to focus on manufacturing as Britain looks towards a huge infrastructure programme - including new nuclear power stations and big transport projects - with too few engineers and too little home-grown industry.

He is not into picking winners and acknowledges that “industrial policy” sounds a bit too 1970s for today's world. But he is equally wary of the concept of the weightless economy and the post-industrial society.

Like Sir John Rose, chief executive of Rolls-Royce, Mr Lambert believes that a healthy manufacturing sector has many benefits, not least in terms of social balance and cohesion.

Britain does need the sort of jobs provided by manufacturing - we can't all be derivatives traders or hedge fund managers.

Leaving everything to market forces can create winners. The City of London is the product of market forces rather than government planning.

But Britain has also been left with car industry that is entirely foreign-owned and which does not do any research and development here. It may not matter that most of the City is foreign-owned, but the state of the car industry looks more precarious.

The chief executive of Aston Martin, which yesterday announced it would revive the Lagonda marque, complains that the company has to source overseas because there are no longer sufficient good component suppliers in Britain. No good tyres, no good microchips.

Aston Martin will probably go overseas to make the Lagonda as it is doing with its new Rapide model.

It could be argued, of course, that the death of the UK-owned car industry resulted not from the lack of government planning but from bad government planning in the 1960s and 1970s. Compared with some of our rivals, we have just not been very good at industrial policy.

Nor have we been very good at ensuring we have the quality and quantity of scientific and technical education manufacturing needs. Without that, the Government's vision for manufacturing will remain just a vision.

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