'Labour could punish businesses with windfall taxes and pushed up rates' - Brandon Lewis
'Now is the time to unleash businesses to drive economic growth and power,' says Brandon Lewis
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It’s a simple statement, and yet one often forgotten by those with a statist mindset who pour over economic data as they plot their changes to Britain. A government can help to set the conditions for growth, but it’s business that does the hard yards to deliver it.
Another often-forgotten factor is the human touch. Business is about relationships. They foster connection, particularly through key sectors like retail, with businesses like village pubs and corner shops doing so much to bind their local communities.
An urban and metropolitan party like Labour often doesn't understand that. There’s a reason they’ve lost so much of their traditional support over the past twenty-odd years.
A local community and country are still about place, about a sense of national identity, not a series of identities grouped through technology. Similarly, the economy is not a giant set of levers that can simply be moved up and down according to taste.
Indeed, we need fewer levers, period. The best thing we could do to empower businesses is to set them free. We need to further ease their red tape and make the United Kingdom a competitive tax base for business. This will help domestic businesses grow and employ more, and international businesses want to invest and base themselves here.
That is, of course, if we want to take full advantage of Brexit, and not pretend it doesn’t exist. Freeing up business is a key area we can and should go.
We need to recognise that higher corporation tax than our neighbours in Ireland doesn’t help encourage business. Former Chancellor George Osborne was right to cut it and we should be fearful of Labour punishing businesses, what with their windfall taxes on key sectors and stealth plans to push up rates.
The successive governments I was fortunate to be a part of had to make tough decisions post-COVID and post-Ukraine, but a Conservative government is clear about the journey of travel to reduce the tax burden.
Helping businesses to employ by lowering National Insurance is the right thing to do and if we can now look to reduce personal taxes too, we can free the public up to decide how to spend their cash too.
Because, unlike Labour, Conservatives trust people to make their own decisions, whether that’s to start a business, to spend their money, or to build their communities. History shows us the British people will get on with the job if you let them get on with doing it.
There is no point denying we are both on a knife’s edge and at a key inflection point. The stakes are high, even if inflation is down. A sea of troubles is still lapping at our shores.
The decisions we take now will have an enormous impact on our future prosperity. If we get things wrong, Britain might miss out on the next key sectors to drive economic growth.
If we hobble businesses with more tax and push up government spending, we will have little ability to recover from another unexpected shock, whether that’s delivered by Vladimir Putin, the mullahs in Iran and their proxies in the Gulf and Mediterranean, or the Chinese leadership in a place like Taiwan.
That’s why now is the time to unleash businesses to drive our economic growth and power. We need to both enable and support the hard work and graft of industry that powers business and creates the jobs that, in turn, creates our standing in the world.
There is a big opportunity for Britain. It’s up to us to seize it.