Monday 8th October I have an Oral Question to the government on small business development:
With the domestic market slugging exports could provide the turbo boost for the recovery, however only 1 in 5 small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) exports its good and services overseas. How can government encourage this figure to grow?
Broaden horizons: At present of those small businesses which do export 87% trade within the European Economic Area and 70% to North America but only 11% to China (FSB ‘Made in the UK’ Exporting Report, Dec 2010). Yet for the UK plc as a whole exports to China increased by 74% in 2011; India was up 95% and Russia up over 100%. UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) do an incredible job of identifying opportunities overseas opportunities for our major corporations, they must now extend that remit to include SMEs. Overseas trade delegations led by the Prime Minister to India, China and Brazil have been highly effective in winning big orders for big business but there should also be seats on the plane for the small acorns of the current British economy who will be the Great Oaks of tomorrow.
Open up to the world: There needs to be a grown up conversation about immigration. Immigration levels are seen as a problem just behind jobs in many opinion polls and yet we are not going to grow UK plc by turning away potential customers or giving the impression that potential investors and trade partners are terrorist suspects. You can’t shout out that Britain is open for business and then run downstairs and padlock the shop door. No wonder the UK ambassador to Beijing last year described the UK visa system as ‘self-defeating’. Higher education is one of this country’s greatest exports—it brings in students who typically spend around £75,000 on fees and living accommodation during their studies. Overseas students account for a very large proportion of our science graduates who could be the innovation Intel inside SMEs’ as well as export executives to sell British good into their home markets.
Cash flow: Anyone who has run a business knows that the greatest daily battle is to get the cash in from customers. If this is a battle when your customer is in the same town and jurisdiction then the obstacles can be terrifying for dealing in say Russia, India and China. Added to this the tight-fisted nature of business banking at present which provides often insurmountable barriers for entry into new export markets. This is where UK Export Finance has a hugely important role to play in supporting SMEs through insuring exports against non-payment and providing loan guarantees.
Stable exchange rates: Of the many SMEs struggling to gain a foothold in overseas markets they can often see themselves priced out of contracts after years of patient negotiation by sharp movements in exchange rates. This is why the best way probably for the government to support our exporters is to tackle the public sector deficit and provide incentives for private sector growth such as lower tax and less regulation.
Leverage the Internet: Big business can sustain representative offices in target markets and hire sales executives, lawyers and accountants who will smooth the sales and contract process. SMEs’ don’t have the time or resource to deploy in chasing potential markets this is why Internet connectivity can turn the world instantly into a global high street with shop windows available to all. The government led and privately funded £2.5 billion programme is designed to provide 90% super-fast broadband coverage at 24 mbps by 2015 which will still leave us well outside the top ten countries at their speeds our competitors have today. If we aim to be the most competitive economy in the world we better be the best connected economy also.
We have just had the most glorious summer when the eyes of the world were upon the UK with the Queen’s Jubilee, Olympics, Paralympics. The government rode this wave highly effectively with its ‘Britain is Great’ campaign. Now is the time to ensure that we not only grow the value of exports but grow the number of businesses who value exporting too.
The problem with exporting outside the EU is that we’re often uncompetitive because all the red tape imposed by the EU. The net result is that the thing we’re best at is exporting jobs to those parts of the world where it’s cheaper to produce goods and provide services.
So how do you explain all the economic refugees coming to the UK?
They’re not coming from the same places that the jobs are going.
Lord Bates, this Matter is asking us
“how can we increase the amount we are already consuming and destroying from the Earth’s non-renewable and renewable resources
in order to prolong bonanza-spendings, luxury-lifestyles, and sell-ebratory-spectator-masses,
such as Royal Yachts, Weddings and Command-Extracaganzas;
and such as Games, Armchair Spots, and Couch-Grass-Potatowings,
and privately millionaired Talk-Show Hosts/esses ?”
——
Those ‘creating’ such a Future surely themselves need to “grow up”,
wouldn’t you, as the sort of key-mediating-publisher, agree ?
You can’t shout out that Britain is open for business and then run downstairs and padlock the shop door.
Quite apart from which, the planes which bring the goods have to pay their way, and the only way of doing that is by filling it up with human cargo.
The problem of human densities on the planet
may not be as serious as they seemed 10 years ago, given the extraordinary power of
mobile internet and e-mail systems, such as Ipad (which I can’t afford!)
Some people suggest that landline communication may become a thing of the past
for many, when they can use such elegant and beautifully designed digital gadgets, but it does also mean that somebody in the back street of Accra or Lagos is in instant touch with somebody in Back St. Battersea.
We really are in a global village where instant communication has provided us with more “space” than we ever imagined we would have. That does not mean there are no people about who want to hog it all for themselves.There are.
Broaden horizons:
Ok! Lord Sugar and Dragons Den excluding, here is a challenge for members of the house. You want to bring a new product to market, a novel telephone system. It consists of two cans connected together by a piece of string. To sell the product within the EU you need to genuinely obtain a CE mark (bogus self certification is not acceptable) and you cannot afford to pay consultants for doing this for you. Having obtained these marks you have then have to find the appropriate HMRC export category coding for CN22 postal labelling.
Open up to the world: At some time in the future the UK economy has started growing. It is attracting labour from the Schengen countries in ever increasing numbers and they are both under cutting UK labour rates and depressing those rates by an oversupply of labour. Earnings are flowing back to these countries and are not being spent in the UK. It is causing political instability.
Cash flow: Problems can be alleviated by the using Escrow facilities however their rates are high. The government establishes loan insurance and Escrow facility for UK exporters.
Stable exchange rates: Join the Euro.
Leverage the Internet: In Hong Kong duties are NOT levied on import/exports with a value less than 320 GBP (HKD$4000).
8. Allowances
http://www.royalmail.com/small-medium-business/international-business/using-international-services/delivery-other-countries/hong-kong
This promotes small industry enterprise by ensuring that it can competitively buy raw materials and sell finished goods on the world stage through the internet.
Copyright and Intellectual Property:
German economic historian Eckhard Höffner, his work summarized in a Der Spiegel review titled “No Copyright Law: The Real Reason for Germany’s Industrial Expansion.” Details a prospective path to growth?
Some companies buy up patents as future investments. Meanwhile manufactures worldwide spend an enormous amount of time and money getting around this and not always successfully. We need to ask our collective selves a question: if the patent has been dormant for more than a year should its use be royalty free for a further five years until sales can fund royalty payments.
Ref: Did weak copyright laws help Germany outpace the British Empire?
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/08/drool-britannia-did-weak-copyright-laws-help-germany-outpace-the-united-kingdom/
Pretty much the consequences.
You’ve omitted the other bit.
Since its an international company, you set up online in Belgium. Yep, that well known tax haven. Or Luxembourg. Nice low taxes. You could even go Eire.
Who gets taxed? The UK where its delivered? Hong Kong (yep, you’re having a laugh). Offshore? Its a nice industry. Not only that, your money is protected from the Kleptomaniac fraudsters in Westminster.
Look here’s a simple plan.
Abolish Vince Cable’s department. All of it.
Now you will have to give up on your freebees. Tough.
What do we get from that?
Spending £16.5 billion.
Income tax receipts, 150 bn. People could have a 10% reduction in their income tax payments.
What would they choose? Uncle Vince or the money?
Capital gains tax raised 4 bn. That could go – completely
Inheritance tax – 3 bn. You could get rid of that too.
Stamp duty – 6 bn. So you could get the housing market moving with removal of that, IHT and CGT.
You could even get rid of airline passenger duty, or alternatively tax on insurance.
I think its time to axe that department completely.
At the same time we can axe the Lords and save 600 million over a term.
Now will this solve the government debt problem? Not a hope in hell
After all you all run a fraudulent set of books, with the debts off balance sheet when they are on-balance sheet items.
consists of two cans connected together by a piece of string. If we could still listen to the radio with a cat’s whisker
we might get a better service.
Actually (Gareth)
it is the few individually-capitalistic multinational companies and their distributors who cause we greater
People-Populations to “want something to call our own”
Including “space”,
an illusion of being “a heard and respected voice in the Global Village”,
and likewise subliminally to prize “goods” and “services” most of which are insidiously-harmful even long-term murderous,
We have to buy, or by some other means, have something for our own self. To ‘call our own’,
and which imperceptibly also addict us to unhealthy-habits that ‘feel good’.
You’ve heard me say it before (but others even from ‘on high’ “leaked” it first no doubt):
Britain has never yet had either a Health Service or a Participatory Democracy.
The so-called NHS is in fact the National Illnesses Sector;
and Western-Democracy is in fact a One-Way-Top-Down,
Benign Economo-Oligarchy.
———–
If a peaceful-revolution doesn’t grow very soon, Military-Strength and Economic-Overkill will continue to send us all, including our Earth’s Lifesupports, faster down the Slippery-Consumption-Slope into Extinction.
Nil desperandum; Prof Iain somebody (Stewart ?) told TV documentary followers that even after Human Economics and Physical-Prowesses have extincted many other lifeforms as well as ourselves, (Homo-sapiens sapiens = Doubly-Reasonable-humans)
Some vegetational and a micro-body of animalian/bacterial/virus/ basic ‘kingdoms’ of Life, will still go forward on this Planet.
Britain has never yet had either a Health Service or a Participatory Democracy
A sickness service, and in the words of Leonard Cohen “Where none was sick and none was well”, and an elctoral college democracy.
Some vegetational and a micro-body of animalian/bacterial/virus/ basic ‘kingdoms’ of Life, will still go forward on this Planet. Some entomologists believe that insects are the highst form of life, since there is very litle doubt that they will continue to increase in number long after “la fin du Monde” for human beings.
6,000m is a smidgen compared with the number of insects even now. Blagger probably knows how many insects there are in the world, since he is omniscient, even about Olives.
Exporting outside the EU? I am assuming its the arms selling you are referring to?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/interactive/2012/jul/13/defence-military-uk-arms-exports-middle-east-interactive
Which is one of the reasons the British and US are in fighting over the French, Germans, Spanish, etc., making a bid with respect to BAE/EADS. The yanks fear control over the war machine firm possibly giving Europe true clout and independence over it’s own military self interest.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-07/french-bae-eads-demands-threaten-deal-u-k-minister-says.html
Perhaps set them free? Now there’s a thought