The importance of building long-term growth opportunities for businesses

Coventry and Warwickshire Growth Hub CEO, Craig Humphrey, attended a regional business leaders’ reception in the East Midlands last week. In his latest blog, he gives his thoughts on the importance of building long-term growth opportunities for businesses and Labour’s business partnership for growth.

Since the global financial crash of 2008, growth throughout the UK’s economy has been sluggish, which has led to a very challenging picture for businesses of all shapes and sizes and in all sectors, particularly with the increase in interest rates and dramatic rises in utility bills.

Growth affords you more resilience to these sorts of pressures which are often difficult to predict and Growth Hubs interact with thousands of businesses each year giving us a wide base of real time intelligence, as opposed to the narrow view often promoted for lobbying to inform policy.

Informed with all that - evidence and the climate in which businesses are currently operating, it is important that institutions such as the Coventry and Warwickshire Growth Hub listen to the opinions of all the major political parties ahead of the release of their manifestos, when a date is announced for the General Election.

Policy around an Industrial Strategy is a subject I have discussed many times before because it is hurting UK plc and is putting us at a competitive disadvantage as other countries across the global economy soak up structural investment.

At an event attended by Labour Party leader, Sir Keir Starmer, and Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, in Nottingham last Thursday, it was heartening to hear they plan to create an Industrial Strategy Council to deliver growth, which is a policy I have raised many times before.

The sentiment that I always convey when talking to politicians of all parties is that businesses crave stability and long-term thinking.

Throughout our discussions with hundreds and hundreds of businesses in Coventry and Warwickshire each year, owners have increasingly told us that they want some sense of certainty to enable them to plan for the future.

I think that’s a crucial role which Government can provide, which means businesses have the confidence to invest in new machinery, expand their firm or hire new staff – and that would be welcome from whichever party is in office following the next General Election.

That’s why I’ve been invited to take part in dialogue with all the political parties and ensure we are in conversation with anyone who might be forming the next Government.

It is encouraging that Labour is addressing businesses’ desire for stability by pledging that, should they be successful in the General Election, corporation tax would be a maximum of 25 per cent for the whole of the next parliament term along with full expensing that enables companies to deduct 100 per cent of the cost of qualifying capital investments in the year these are purchased, which backs up their promise to make announcements early and gives confidence to the markets.

I’m encouraged by the fact Sir Keir Starmer wants to have meaningful discussions with businesses and business organisations before the date of the General Election is announced so that they are ready to hit the ground running with policies instead of waiting until they are in power should they be successful.

Empowering businesses that have the ambition and opportunity to scale is an important element of any growth strategy and for too long there hasn’t been enough long-term structural planning by government to unlock that potential.

That is often because access to finance is particularly difficult for these high-growth businesses and we are lagging behind all our competitors within the G7 when it comes to scale-up.

Labour has made a commitment to improve the supply of Patient Capital for scale-up businesses so that Venture Capitalists can make these types of investments much more easily.

Currently, we don’t have enough Patient Capital and liquidity so we need to unlock some of these to enable long-term views to be taken on investments.

Our day-to-day engagement with businesses gives us rich real time intelligence and I will be continuing my dialogue with all the major political parties before and after the General Election on behalf of the Growth Hub network and the companies we support.