Big government is smothering SMEs |
The government’s Employment Rights Act will drive yet another nail in the coffin of SMEs, says Tim Dier
According to the Department of Business and Trade (DBT), Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) employ around 16.9m of us, a whopping 60 per cent of total private sector jobs. That includes everyone from the white-van man through to fintech start-ups.
The DBT estimate that accelerating SME growth by just one percentage point a year could deliver £320bn to the UK economy by 2030. But what’s making this growth so unattainable, you may ask?
Policymakers searching for the roadblocks throw out nebulous phrases such as “insufficient investment”, “skills shortages”, or “global headwinds”. But, to paraphrase the old poker proverb, if the government looks around the economy and can’t spot the problem, it’s probably the government.
Research undertaken by the Centre for Policy Studies has identified a plethora of red tape and associated costs that has built up over decades and now clogs up the arteries of SMEs. Complex rules that apply........