Comment from Daren Shaw, Merseyside and Cheshire Area Leader, Federation of Small Businesses (FSB)
- With less than a month to go until the Chancellor’s spring statement, the FSB has set out measures to secure recovery, support small businesses and restore the labour market.
- Urgency highlighted as latest FSB Small Business Index (SBI) shows small firms’ confidence at lowest since second lockdown.
- “Make or break” Budget – Jeremy Hunt’s recent encouraging words on economy must be turned into actions – including reversing “astonishing” decision to stifle innovation.
FSB is calling on the Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, to bring forward bold measures to create a Budget that drives economic growth, fosters a small business-friendly environment and creates job opportunities to support a UK-wide recovery.
The UK’s largest business group’s call comes with urgency. With less than a month to go until the Chancellor delivers his annual spring statement, the latest FSB Small Business Index (SBI) shows small business confidence is down to a level almost on par with the second Covid lockdown.
FSB is calling for a budget that creates an agenda for growth:
- Measures to boost entrepreneurship and help small businesses, including proposals to scrap business rates for firms in properties with a rateable value of up to £25k a year, paid for by a small increase to the multiplier on very large properties; increasing employers’ Employment Allowance in line with the National Living Wage; and for the Chancellor to lead the way on tackling the UK’s late payment culture.
- More than 15 separate recommendations on improving the UK’s flagging labour market participation rates, including a new Kickstart-style job scheme for those whose health problems have kept them out of work for a long time, incentives to spread best practice sickness management, increasing tax-free childcare to £3,000 and more help for over 50s employment.
- A delay to the Government’s incredibly damaging decision to slash Research & Development (R&D) tax relief, which has blindsided tech entrepreneurs and small engineering firms. Tax credits for small businesses doing R&D have been the single most successful feature of the last decade of innovation policy and should be prioritised over more funding for Innovate UK.
- Proposals to make sure small businesses can access energy efficiency technologies, including a flagship ‘Help to Green’ initiative, as well as those to make the energy market fairer for the smallest business, including a 14-day cooling off period for small firms’ energy contracts.
- Proposals to increase training levels, including scrapping the rule that says the self-employed aren’t allowed to deduct training that will help them expand their business, and a further rollout of the EnterprisingYou pilot that has received positive results for the self-employed in Manchester.
Daren Shaw, FSB Merseyside and Cheshire Area Leader, said: “When the Chancellor delivers his Budget on 15 March we need to see a strong agenda for growth and a range of pro-small business policies. The problem facing the Conservative Government is that the economic clock is ticking as much as the electoral one.
“There are many necessary steps for promoting economic growth that are now urgent. The Chancellor has to make significant strides on multiple areas of policy in order to deliver real, noticeable returns and lead to strong growth.
“There were encouraging signs in his Bloomberg speech that Jeremy Hunt, a former entrepreneur, gets it – but this really is a make or break budget so he must turn his words into actions.
“Hopefully, there is a recognition in government that too many initiatives of the past have ignored the small firms that make up such a large part of UK businesses – they should be the focus when making economic policy. We need to help people back to work, get more entrepreneurs starting businesses, tackle inefficiencies in our energy use, and favour challenger businesses when it comes to R&D.
“The decision to cut R&D tax credits for small businesses from April was rightly seen as astonishing. The UK risks being left in an innovation wasteland if Jeremy Hunt does not take control of Treasury innovation policy and restore the single most successful industrial policy of the last decade. This move to stifle innovation must be reversed.”
