There's still a genuine sense of shock in parts of the manufacturing industry that the Business Growth Service, which includes the Manufacturing Advisory Service and the Growth Accelerator programme, is being scrapped.
Business Growth Service (BGS) stats show it has assisted more than 28,000 businesses, helped SMEs raise more than £155 million in finance and that nine in ten firms would recommend it.
Since 2012, the BGS has added £4.8 billion of gross value added and created 110,000 jobs.
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The decision came
Insiders at the Manufacturing Advisory Service (MAS) tell me they had been prepared for a budget cut, given the scale of Osborne's cuts to non-protected government departments including BIS, but there had been no warning that MAS would be scrapped completely.
The timing is odd as well. Manufacturing shrank in 2015 and remains well below pre-2008 levels. So much for the 'march of the makers'.
A recent survey by the manufacturers' association EEF found only automotive and chemical firms remained buoyant.
The rest of the manufacturing sector expect output and employment to stagnate, no doubt on the back of a slowdown in China and a lack of orders from continental Europe.
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Winding up MAS could actually exacerbate challenges for manufacturing firms.
It may be some professional service firms could offer some of the sort of guidance MAS previously provided but smaller manufacturers in particular may shy away from seeking help if they fear heavy costs (even if such fears are misplaced).
On the other side, MAS also provided a very useful line of communication from the sector to government, one that will now be cut.
And MAS didn't just help businesses to negotiate the bureaucracy of tax credits, the Regional Growth Fund or the Tooling Up Fund in automotive - it also gave many manufacturing SMEs access to critical experience and contacts.
BIS has tried to make out that MAS is being replaced by local Growth Hubs but this is misleading.
For a start, the £12 million across 39 LEPs works out at just over £300,000 per LEP. Big deal.
Secondly, while LEPs here in the Midlands have prioritised manufacturing as a key sector in their strategic plans (European Structural & Investment Funds Strategies or ESIFs), what about those LEPs that, well, don't prioritise manufacturing?
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In such cases, local Growth Hubs are unlikely to offer much if any support to manufacturing firms (similar concerns apply to the ending of the Regional Growth Fund and its replacement with the Local Growth Fund under the control of LEPs).
There is no longer a national drive to support manufacturing, it seems.
Thirdly, the Growth Hubs are simply not ready in many cases to take on the mantle in time before MAS is scrapped. At the very least, there is a policy sequencing issue.
All of this leaves a fundamental question of where manufacturing firms go for help when MAS is scrapped.
It also raises wider questions about the Government's commitment - or not - to using industrial policy to support manufacturing.
On this, there's effectively been radio silence from the BIS Secretary Sajid Javid since he came into office in May.
While the last government didn't have much of an industrial policy, what Vince Cable did in automotive and aerospace was pretty effective, for example, through the Automotive Council which brought together key actors and identified opportunities and barriers to growth.
That continued the work begun by Lord Mandelson at the back end of the last Labour government. The Automotive Council is to continue.
Critically, though, its work under Cable was underpinned up by a range of (modest) interventions to boost skills, rebuild supply chains and encourage investment in the industry, such as through the Regional Growth Fund, the Advanced Manufacturing Supply Chain Initiative, MAS itself, and MAS' Tooling up Fund to support investment in tools in the Supply Chain.
All have now been scrapped, it seems. This is a great shame as for years the 海角视频 didn't 'do' industrial policy.
It finally got things right in a few sectors on a modest scale and much of this now seems to be being scrapped through the twin pressures of the Chancellor's austerity and the current BIS Secretary's liberation instincts.
It's the death of industrial policy by a thousand cuts.
The government has said it will continue to support automotive and aerospace. I'd still like to see what that support will now actually look like.
If the government was trying to end parts of the Business Growth Service that can now be delivered by professional consultants, then that might make sense.
But in ending the whole service, the Government has effectively scrapped a range of unique expertise on manufacturing improvement that was highly valued and trusted by industry as impartial.
"Throwing the baby out with the bathwater" is the phrase that several industry experts have used.
The Government needs to rethink this ill thought out decision.
Professor David Bailey works at the Aston Business School