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Mr
Cameron, you’re talking to the wrong people!
January 2011
SMEs are being ignored – and why?
The news that prime minister, David Cameron
has called in the bosses of some of the biggest companies
with a view to tackling unemployment will, no doubt, cause
many small business owners to wonder if he is not addressing
the wrong people.
The UK’s SMEs create 50% of all new
employment yet are mired in a slough of uncertainty, a
perceived shortage of working capital, and swathes of labour
laws that do nothing to encourage fresh employment.
Small businesses are no different to a crop
of grain. Offer it the right climate and fertile ground,
plant well and nourish the growth and you will reap a rich
harvest. The present UK business environment offers stony
ground, strangled resources to encourage growth and infernal
pests that take far too much time sorting out that could be
better spent.
The EFG scheme has something to offer but
lacks some of the benefits of Small Firms Loan Guarantee
scheme that so fuelled the SME burst that pulled the UK out
of the early 1990s recession. A flow of capital to SMEs
would encourage recruitment and would do wonders for general
confidence too.
But most important of all, the qualifying
time for unfair dismissal claims should be extended to two
years. Whilst there will always be genuine claimants, though
nothing like as many as the TUC would have you believe, an
employer has a duty to his, or her, other employees to root
out and get rid of those who let the rest of the team down.
Not only are the dice loaded against an employer by insurers
who would rather pay up ransom money than go for the extra
expense of a case they could win, there are also serial
claimants who comb job adds looking for transgressions of
the various laws that have been passed in the last 13 years.
SMEs are happier places to work, have a
productivity record that outstrips many large firms and all
of the public sector and far better absenteeism performance
too.
Calls too that HMRC is to spend billions
hounding SMEs to nit-pick and collect a few quid here and
there in a mightily non cost-effective manner might please
Cameron’s natural opponents but sends the wrong message to
those Cameron should be wooing.
There are over four million SMEs in the UK,
the banks report that start-ups are 15% up. Of the total
some one million SMEs probably have the power to recruit an
average of one person apiece given the right encouragement.
Whilst some see the shedding of thousands of jobs by the
public sector as an economic damper, others see an
opportunity through many of them starting businesses and
critically in many areas where SMEs just could not compete
with inflated public sector employment benefits either so
the sector could not flourish.
So Mr Cameron, the people who can do this for
you are the heroes of UK plc who often put heart and home on
the line to support finance for their business, who work
longer and more productive hours, who produce far more for
you for every pound invested than any other economic sector.
Consult the big firms and they might try to
take another 30 days before they pay their SME suppliers to
fund the window dressing schemes I am certain they will come
up with to please you and ease their bosses towards a gong.
Just get your public sector and outmoded
labour laws off their backs and you may be pleasantly
surprised. A million SMEs wield colossal clout, all you need
do is encourage them.
But to do that you must speak to them first.
Editor
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