Happy New Year!
By far the most important task for the Government right now is getting vaccines as quickly as possible into the arms of the UK population.
As James Lawson, our newest Research Adviser, argues in his paper Worth a Shot, the Government can and should speed things up (Tony Blair’s think tank also released a paper arguing along similar lines). We, like the FT’s Chris Giles, have argued consistently from the start of the pandemic that the protection of human life and the protection of the economy have never been in conflict. That has never been truer, with over a 1,000 deaths a day, and every additional week of the pandemic costing the taxpayer £6 billion, while reducing economic activity by £5 billion.
But this too shall pass (hopefully more quickly than the current trajectory), and when it does entrepreneurs will be key to the economic fightback. The Prime Minister wants part of this to be driven by regulatory divergence from EU rules. While the trade deal limits areas where we can diverge, and there are areas where we would be worse off doing so, there will be opportunities (no matter what you think about the rights and wrongs of us having left).
Now is the time to let us know about regulatory reforms that you think would help make life easier for UK entrepreneurs, as it’s our job to try to make them happen. Get in touch with Sam Dumitru with your ideas.
Kapow!
We have lots of exciting plans for this year, but I won’t overload you with them all in one go. I’ll limit myself to two today.
First, as part of the APPG for Entrepreneurship, this year we are undertaking a project with the Enterprise Research Centre (ERC) on Levelling Up. Find out more about how you can get involved here, and let me know if you want to support any other policy areas pertinent to entrepreneurship.
Second, this year I’m going to do a weekly interview with an entrepreneur in our network who has something interesting to teach us about policy and more broadly scaling a business. These will run from 8.30am to 9am on Thursdays, with our Advisers and Supporters invited to sit in on the interview and ask questions via chat. The first is with the founder of Dishoom. Let me know who else you would like to hear from. Current Advisers and Supporters should just drop us an email for a diary invite to this, and if you want to find out more about becoming a Supporter or Adviser please feel free to get in touch with me.
Incentives matter
The prospect of the Chancellor aligning Capital Gains Tax (CGT) and Income Tax in the upcoming Budget has understandably spooked many entrepreneurs in our network. I can’t think of many potential policy changes that have resulted in so many people getting in touch with me to raise concerns.
It’s not quite as straightforward as many seem to imply on either side of the debate, but luckily our Research Director is a tax expert and has written a detailed article on the key issues.
In essence, we think alignment would create more problems than it solves by deterring investment and entrepreneurial risk-taking, without more strategic reforms that better incentivise people to take the risk of starting and growing a business. I encourage you to read and share Sam’s article, as well as signing up to his weekly Substack email. This won’t be the last thing we do on the proposed CGT changes, so watch this space.
(New)sletter
We have a new newsletter! This one focuses on entrepreneurship education policy, and is written by our Research Adviser James Croft. I’ve known James for years, and the brilliant work he undertook in founding and running the Centre for Education Economics think tank. You can read his first newsletter here and sign up for future monthly updates here.
Imitating art
As many of you will know, in normal times we've packed out private cinemas for premieres of films like The Founder for our network. I can't wait to do so again. Through Twitter, Anton Howes (our Head of Innovation Research) has come up with a list of films, TV and documentaries that his followers think accurately portray the process of innovation and entrepreneurship. Hopefully there’s something there to help you get through Lockdown 3.0!
Read the whole newsletter here, and sign up for our newsletters here.