Mark Prisk, the Shadow Secretary for Business, gave a well received speech at the NFEA conference on Thursday where he outlined (without giving much detail) the Conservative Party position on supporting business, when and if, they come to power in 6-8 month’s time. There was the now ritual Tory announcement that they will take an axe to public debt by slashing public spending sooner rather than later and there was the reiterated promise that the Tories in power will reduce and time limit “unnecessary” business regulations. No surprise there, but amongst the promises there were some real new commitments made by the conservative spokesman, including a promise to launch a new £50 billion loan guarantee scheme that will be open to all businesses and a commitment to reduce the Corporation Tax paid by small businesses to 20%, (to be paid for I suspect by reducing allowances elsewhere).
When it came to what the conservatives would do about Business Support there was only a promise that a policy would be announced later in the Autumn. We where therefore left to draw our own conclusions from a series comments, hints, nudges and winks given by Mark Prisk in the question and answer session with NFEA members. My own interpretation was that, if and when, the Conservatives come to power they will look to:
A: Let Boris Johnson and any future Mayor of London decide whether he wishes to keep a probably scaled down version of the LDA. The Tory policy on RDA’s will apparently differ from region to region.
B: Change or abolish Business Link. The Business Link Information Diagnostic and Brokerage model is particularly hated by Mark Prisk. He got a good round of applause when he said the Conservatives will not use Tier 1 outputs (such as number of website hits or registrations) to judge the performance of a Business Link franchise or business support service. In fact whether there will be any regional Business Links (as opposed to a national website) seems yet to be decided.
C: Support Mentoring. As an ex-Princes Trust mentor, Mark Prisk personally likes and values mentoring. One to one support given over an extensive period of time seems to be his preferred business support model. Apart from that, the Conservatives will go along with the Solution for Business 30 product lines.
D: Fund start-up support from the Welfare budgets. Funding from a future Tory government for business support (especially regarding helping people start-up new businesses) will probably have to come from reductions in welfare spending on such things as New Deal. There seems to be a debate to be had in the Tory higher echelons before we get a commitment from them to divert some of the New Deal money (£300m+ per annum in London alone) presently used to train and support the unemployed claimants to better compete against each other for non existent jobs to programmes that our members can offer that will enable new and growing small business to actually create new jobs. To help Mr Prisk win the debate the shadow minister asked us to give him the facts on the ground concerning how little is being spent by Job Centre Plus/DWP on programmes that are helping the unemployed go self-employed or start a business. If you can help please let me know so I can pass on the details.
E: Prefer “Pump prime” funding model for business support programmes. That means focusing the limited money the Tory Government will have for our sector, on funding programmes that can demonstrate that they can, within a short time period, become self-financing. This will be a big challenge to our members but an even bigger challenge to the likes of Serco and Experian.
Overall the impression given was that Mark Prisk – Shadow Minister for Business – knows his “Onion’s” when it comes to enterprise. He seems to be saying that whilst money will be very tight under a future Conservative government, business support will be given a higher priority than is presently the case under the present government. Cynically you may say he knows the NFEA audience but I choose optimistically to hope for the best.
Finally, the undoubtedly impressive shadow minister did reveal that he has been working this week with the Mayor of London on the future of the LDA, Business Link and business support in London. We have been promised a very interesting announcement on the future of the LDA/ Business Link for London in the press on Monday. The Tories first test of whether they mean what they preach.
