The Government recently announced a number of policies to help British businesses.
They have launched the updated and overhauled businesslink.gov.uk website. This is now the primary gateway for businesses, of whatever scale, seeking support and information from the Government. It’s backed by a new telephone contact centre and many thousands of new business mentors.
They have launched a new nationally-delivered Manufacturing Advisory Service to help small and medium-sized manufacturers to grow. It is estimated that this will help generate £1.5 billion in economic growth. For more information, click here.
The Government continue their goal of cutting red tape with the extension of the Primary Authority Scheme. This allows businesses spanning local authority boundaries to nominate a particular authority under whose regulatory regime they will operate. In addition, it will offer clearer, more straightforward guidance – so that businesses, particularly SMEs, have greater access to comprehensive guidance on what they need to do to comply. It is hoped this will create a more accountable and transparent system of local regulation and a simpler regulatory landscape.
The Make it in Great Britain campaign is aimed at transforming outdated opinions of UK manufacturing. Business Secretary, Vince Cable, said:
I want our most passionate manufacturers, whether that’s ‘captains of industry’ or those just starting out in their careers, to be our industry champions. With their help, we can modernise people’s views of manufacturing and dispel the myth that ’we don’t make anything in the UK anymore.
In Europe, despite the present instability, my colleague Mark Prisk is focusing on reducing European regulation by pressing EU officials and MEPs to follow the UK’s lead.
My colleague Douglas Carswell has been rather scathing about the Government’s progress. His post here, reminds me to ask economist David B Smith whether he believes we have moved beyond New Labour’s system, which he described as “an economic approach that was functionally hard to distinguish from that of fascism.” I’d certainly like to hear from businesses which believe what the Government are doing is a great help and indeed those which don’t.
I look forward to hearing the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement on 29 November. I wish I could believe it will include those measures which would be in everyone’s long term interests: worthwhile bank reform, comprehensive deregulation of business and a sufficient acceleration of the deficit reduction strategy to enable tax cuts…
Related reading:
- Schiff and Schiff, How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes: Two Tales of the Economy
- Mises, Bureaucracy (PDF, buy), The Causes of the Economic Crisis (PDF, buy) and Economic Freedom and Interventionism (online, buy)
- Kirzner, How Markets Work: Disequilibrium, Entrepreneurship and Discovery
- More
