\n<\/p>\n
It might be tempting, if you are sitting in Downing Street, to dismiss the current pre-budget howls from big business beasts as standard stuff from usual suspects.<\/p>\n
Archie Norman, the Marks & Spencer chair who told the Telegraph the government\u2019s workers\u2019 rights proposals were \u201ca political indulgence that the country cannot afford\u201d, is a former Tory MP. Stuart Rose, who told the Times that he believed \u201cwe\u2019re genuinely at the edge of a crisis\u201d, is a Tory peer.<\/p>\n
Rain Newton-Smith, the boss of the CBI, is the country\u2019s top business lobbyist. It should not be remotely surprising that she\u2019s pleading for business to be spared more taxes in the budget, even if her argument in the Guardian also carried the provocative advice to the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, to rethink Labour\u2019s manifesto pledges on tax.<\/p>\n
The problem, though, is that these grumbles plainly go deeper \u2013 well beyond the employment rights package. Talk privately to FTSE 100 and 250 executives and you\u2019ll hear consistent themes: that ministers, despite their pre-election schmoozing to woo the business vote, don\u2019t \u201cget\u201d business; that the government has stopped listening; and that key decisions are fluffed, or take too long.<\/p>\n
Exhibit A on the last front was the collapse in January of AstraZeneca\u2019s intended \u00a3450m investment in a vaccine factory in Speke near Liverpool. \u201cSeveral factors have influenced this decision, including the timing and reduction of the final offer compared to the previous government\u2019s proposal,\u201d said the company at the time.<\/p>\n
The Treasury may dispute the account, but the business world (not just a pharmaceutical industry in the middle of a separate quarrel over the prices the NHS pays for prescription medicines) was amazed that a flagship deal could fall apart at the stage of haggling over details. The government, remember, is still aiming to make the UK a \u201clife sciences superpower\u201d.<\/p>\n
Over in retail-land, a specific grumble is not simply that reform of business rates is taking ages (it always does) but that a simple-sounding proposal to shift some receipts from bricks-and-mortar shops to online premises has morphed into a complicated scrap over the size of premises to be captured by a higher rate. \u201cWe still haven\u2019t got a clue where the government is going to end up,\u201d says one executive who met officials in the last month.<\/p>\n
The \u201cnot listening\u201d accusation is echoed even among those with longstanding government contacts. Here\u2019s the chair of one FTSE 100 company: \u201cIt feels like they are not even talking to anyone. They\u2019re in a bunker. What you need for growth is some level of confidence in what is about to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
The danger, says another executive, is that the government is flying blind: \u201cIn the government\u2019s shoes, you\u2019ve got to know which policy ideas on tax will be genuinely damaging and which will cause a fuss but would be stomached.\u201d An increase in levies on banks would fall in the latter category, he suggests, if Reeves is compelled to change some corporate taxes.<\/p>\n
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Sign up to Business Today<\/span><\/p>\n Get set for the working day \u2013 we’ll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n The government gets praise from business on some fronts, it should be said. The overseas trade deals, Reeves\u2019s Mansion House compact, the Treasury\u2019s intervention in the car finance row and the pressure on regulators to be \u201cpro-growth\u201d have gone down well \u2013 as you\u2019d expect. Jonathan Reynolds, the business minister until last week, also tended to be viewed positively; so, too, Varun Chandra, Keir Starmer\u2019s business adviser.<\/p>\n Yet lack of urgency and lack of coordination across government is a consistent message. \u201cWe\u2019ve had the \u2018five missions\u2019, the \u2018plan for change\u2019 and the \u2018three priorities\u2019. It\u2019s just confusing,\u201d says one executive.<\/p>\n The turning point in the business mood was, of course, last November\u2019s \u00a340bn tax-raising budget and its increase in employers\u2019 national insurance. That was never going to win applause in boardrooms, as Reeves surely knew at the time. But it is also true that efforts to repair relations with business afterwards have dribbled into the sand. Some level of tension between government and business is normal (and too much cosiness is worse), but the current level of distrust feels genuinely unhealthy for investment.<\/p>\n Now comes No 10\u2019s creation of a \u201cbudget board\u201d, seemingly intended to avoid another bust-up with business in November. That\u2019s a start, even if nobody pretends there are easy answers when economic forecasts are deteriorating. But a shift in the vibes with business has become urgent. Come 2029, it would be useful to have a few big business figures calling out Reform UK\u2019s fantasy economics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It might be tempting, if you are sitting in Downing Street, to dismiss the current pre-budget howls from big business beasts as standard stuff from usual suspects. Archie Norman, the Marks & Spencer chair who told the Telegraph the government\u2019s workers\u2019 rights proposals were \u201ca political indulgence that the country cannot afford\u201d, is a former<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20495,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[12601,1285,303,6236,12603,12600,4167,4168,12599,101,12602],"class_list":{"0":"post-20494","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-beasts","9":"tag-big","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-deeper","12":"tag-grumbles","13":"tag-howls","14":"tag-nils","15":"tag-pratley","16":"tag-prebudget","17":"tag-tax","18":"tag-usual"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20494\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}