Manifesto > Enterprise: Creating a future for all (Introduction) | A Strategy for Growth and Prosperity | Low, Simple and Fair Taxation | Cutting the cost of the state | Deregulation: Industry, Employment and Incomes | Finance and Credit | Agriculture, Forestry, Fisheries and Foods

Enterprise: Creating a future for all

All businesses have faced a flood of regulation in recent years. The world of commerce is kept efficient by tough competition but the government has put our business sector at a serious disadvantage by its ill-considered actions. The government's attempt to micro-manage industry by a bewildering array of complex measures, futile initiatives and stealth taxes has proved particularly disastrous.

Rather than regulate for every eventuality, we need to concentrate on providing the low tax, low regulation environment which is the principal requirement for successful businesses. The Department of Trade & Industry can best help business by lowering the barriers to success or by removing them altogether.

We propose withdrawing funding for non-specific sector support schemes. We would also abolish Regional Development Agencies including Scottish Enterprise and use the money saved to provide publicly underwritten but commercially operated start-up loan schemes and to reduce business rates.

Our future: high skill, high value jobs

We now face increased competition from rapidly developing economies such as India and China and there has been great concern about the loss of unskilled jobs to these countries. There is a misconception that the decline of UK manufacturing is inevitable as jobs will go abroad where labour is cheaper.

However, new high tech industries offer an immense opportunity to a country like ours with a history rooted in technological expertise and international trade. The UK can be a world leader in high quality manufacturing but only if we provide a dynamic, low cost, lightly regulated environment with a skilled and enthusiastic workforce. Simply trying to protect our industries from competition might provide short term relief but the end result will be the same.

The New Party will introduce lower rates of corporation tax to stimulate industry and inward investment and provide better tax incentives for capital investment, research and development. We will also provide better tax incentives to train apprentices and to improve vocational training schemes.

Reform welfare and the labour market

Although there is a pressing need to prevent the welfare system from causing needless damage to the wider economy we will maintain sensible measures to protect the workforce from exploitation. We will retain a minimum wage but repeal any labour laws and procedures which act as barriers to recruitment.

Cut back on red tape

We will introduce, each year, a ‘Repeals Bill’ to get rid of unnecessary and harmful legislation and to simplify existing regulations. We shall respect the right of individuals and businesses to make their own decisions and exercise their own judgment and we will repeal any unnecessary bureaucracy imposed by the European Union.

We will also shut down all departments, quangos and so-called ‘task forces’ which are not strictly necessary, such as the proposed new Commission for Equality and Human Rights.

We shall introduce modern business systems to the civil service and increase departmental efficiency with less job switching. Salaries will be set to encourage excellence and terms of employment will be matched with the private sector.

Our proposals assume a significant reduction in the size of the Civil Service. However, we would provide attractive enterprise loan schemes and training packages to enable people to enter the private sector. Not only will we make it easier for people to find rewarding careers within the private sector, but our proposals will also boost morale in the civil service which often complains about a lack of job satisfaction and high levels of stress.

Science, skills and manufacturing

For too long we have complacently assumed that the loss of manufacturing could be easily offset by services and high-tech industries.  To some extent that is true, but we can easily become too complacent.

Successive governments seemed to think that countries like China would be content manufacturing low cost toys, trinkets and textiles. However, the Chinese have now built a manufacturing based economy of staggering proportions. They already make 15 per cent of the world's goods and are rapidly moving into new high-tech markets.

We also got it wrong by applying student fees to skills which we are desperately short off. Our universities are now educating a significant number of fee paying foreign students. Not for them media or political studies, however. They are here to gain the type of knowledge their countries need to compete in the real world. In 1975, American universities turned out 30 per cent of the world's PhDs – China produced none. However by 2010 China will produce more science and engineering doctorates than America.

We are even falling behind the sclerotic economies of the EU. Less than 20 per cent of UK manufacturing output is generated by new product launches – in Germany the figure is still nearly half. The value of all UK engineering, aerospace, defence, electronic and electrical equipment companies listed on the London Stock Exchange is around £40 billion which is roughly equivalent to the value of just one big German engineering company, Siemens. 

We should not abandon manufacturing but instead create the conditions in which it can flourish.  Put simply, scientific advance, new technology, university-based research and manufacturing are interdependent.  We have an interest in ensuring that we are able to compete.

Nor should we seek to protect our industry by quotas, which only leads in the end to stagnation. We must concentrate instead on getting rid of high taxes and red tape and sorting out our transport infrastructure. We must also provide the skills needed by forgetting about ineffectual 'enterprise' courses in schools and promote mathematics, science-based and technical subjects. This is the only way to create an entrepreneurial culture at source.

« Back | Up | Next »