I often visit Harlow businesses, and they tell me the same thing again and again:
"Much more needs to be done to help local businesses move out of recession".
"Much more needs to be done to help local businesses move out of recession".
Unfortunately, More firms have gone bust during this recession than in any previous downturn.
The latest Government figures show that in the last quarter, across Essex, Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire, 18 companies faced being wound up.
But the message from Labour Ministers is ‘don’t start a business, don’t buy your home, don’t try and leave money to your children, don’t try and get on’. They’ve made it so difficult to employ people, and impossible to start a business.
I believe that a series of practical steps to promote enterprise and new business. That is why I support new Conservative proposals to:
- End Labour’s practice of pushing thousands of businesses into bankruptcy over small amounts of unpaid taxes. Jobs would be saved and entrepreneurs would be given the support they deserve. The statutory threshold over which the Government can petition to make a business insolvent would be raised:
- Boost social mobility by ending the unfair restrictions on people starting a business in social housing. Social tenants could become entrepreneurs, creating new jobs and opportunities. Measures to prevent noise and nuisance would remain in place.
- Make it easier for people to set up new enterprises by cutting the time it takes to open a new business. Britain should become the fastest place in the world to start a business. Under Labour, it takes twice as long to start one in the UK as in the USA, Denmark or Hong Kong. The number of forms needed to register a new business will be cut, moving towards a ‘one-click’ registration model.
To move out of recession, local firms in the Harlow area need a strong helping hand to help create new jobs and expand their business. It is good that Conservatives will remove the obstacles in the way of new firms and stop the taxman kicking local firms when they’re down.
P.S. For Further details, see the Conservative Business Relations website HERE
P.P>S. The picture shows Shadow Chancellor, George Osborne, and myself visiting Smiths Industry in Harlow.
The Conservative proposals are good ones, but they don't go far enough.
ReplyDeleteMy business began in a back room in my house in Harlow over 25 years ago. It was a huge struggle to get it off the ground due to under funding, inexperience and a hundred and one problems that all new businesses experience. I didn't draw a salary for around two years and then drew a minimal one for a time. Now it's a medium sized SME employing up to a hundred local people.
It is, however, most unlikely that I would be able to establish that business these days in the over regulated and absurdly bureaucratic business environment which now exists in UK.
Every inexperienced, would be entrepreneur who starts a new business inevitably makes many mistakes in the early years, I certainly did. There has to be the flexibility in the regulatory environment to allow those entrepreneurs to make those mistakes and to learn as they go along without suffering dire financial consequences for their mistakes. Yet that vital start up flexibility is exactly what's lacking in Britain now: its been legislated away by the current - ironically error prone - government and the EU.
An ever expanding, ever changing, continuous stream of, - so often irrational, contradictory and unworkable - red tape and bureaucracy gone mad makes business start ups in Britain a hazardous affair now.
One small mistake by a pressurised, would be entrepreneur struggling to establish a new business - for example, failing, as Baroness Scotland, the originator of the legislation, did, to fully understand the impossible complexities and unworkable contradictions of the statutory regulations on illegal working - could lead to a huge fine of £10,000 or more which would be enough to put the new business into liquidation before its had the chance to get off the ground.
Isn't that one of the key reasons why the number of new business start ups in Uk is in decline? In fact, if you exclude the many thousands of grant financed, public/ private limited companies from the new start up statistics, as these are not entrepreurial ventures, the decline in the number of British business start ups becomes abysmal.
It seems to me that there is nothing whatsoever that the Conservatives, or any UK government, can do to improve this situation while we belong to the EU; because some 80% of UK's red tape and bureaucracy is dreamed up in Brussels.