This week’s King’s Speech contained no fewer than 40 Bills as the new Labour Government seeks to make its mark on the country. So what’s in it for entrepreneurs? Well, quite a lot depending on your sector, but today I’ll just focus on three that caught my eye – all of which will impact most businesses.
Skills England Bill (page 66): “My Government will establish Skills England which will have a new partnership with employers at its heart, and my Ministers will reform the apprenticeship levy.”
Businesses will be brought in to try to ensure that we have “the highly trained workforce that England needs.” The key challenge here will be ensuring that the employers promised to sit at the heart of the partnership are not limited to our current crop of large corporates. Of course they should be in the room, but sooner or later they will be the relics of our economy as they get displaced by innovation. To that end, we need to ensure that the entrepreneurs and innovators are involved. This isn’t the same as big tech – though they should be in the room too.
On the second point, we’ve long argued for the replacement of the apprenticeship levy with a skills levy – most recently with Enterprise Nation in Access All Areas: People. It’s good to see things potentially moving in this direction.
Digital Information and Smart Data Bill (page 39): This Bill establishes Digital Verification Services which supports the creation and adoption of secure and trusted digital identity products and services, and sets up Smart Data schemes, allowing the secure sharing of a customer’s data upon their request, with authorised third-party providers.
As I argued last week, the former has the potential to massively reduce and ultimately end bureaucracy for individuals and businesses. The latter builds on the success of Open Banking, and brings to mind From Open Banking to Open Everything, a short paper by John Fingelton from 2018. Proof, perhaps, that good ideas find a way.
Employment Rights Bill (page 20): “My Government is committed to making work pay and will legislate to introduce a new deal for working people to ban exploitative practices and enhance employment rights.”
This Bill promises to do a lot. It will ban zero-hour contracts, ends ‘Fire and Rehire’ and ‘Fire and Replace’, make parental leave, flexible working (within reason), sick pay and protection from unfair dismissal available from day-one on the job for all workers, strengthen protections for new mothers, establishes a new Single Enforcement Body (also known as a Fair Work Agency), and updates trade union legislation.
Alongside potential changes to capital gains tax, this is probably the area of policy that entrepreneurs are most concerned about with the new Government. As noted in the background briefing, the UK benefits from labour market flexibility – not least when it comes to startups at the cutting edge of innovation. While it’s too early to know how this Bill will play out in practice, we shouldn’t kid ourselves – some of its provisions will add to the burden on employers when it comes to taking on more staff.
Local Matters
We’re writing a research paper on the contrasts – and similarities – entrepreneurs experience between the different regions of the UK. If you’re a business owner, we want to hear from you about the challenges you face on a local level. Perhaps it’s poor transport connectivity, difficulties finding the right skills, or something else entirely. If you’d like to feature in the research, let us know by getting in touch here.
Here’s Jonathan
Jonathan Reynolds MP, the new Secretary of State for Business and Trade wants to hear from you. It doesn’t matter if your business has one or one thousand employees, he wants you to tell him: how we should use our Industrial Strategy to kickstart Britain’s economy; how you have supported your teams while also growing your business so we can take forward the best examples to inform our work; what’s stopping you growing if you’re a small business owner; and how we should use our trade strategy to drive up exports and sell more British-designed, British-made products and services to markets around the world? Drop him an email with the answers.
You Better Not Miss
The Department for Business and Trade have also asked us to share an online event taking place on Thursday 25th July between 2pm-3.30pm to encourage applications to the King’s Awards for Enterprise. You can request a place by emailing them with your name and company.
Merci, De(rien)
After a year on the coalface of policy, our researcher Derin Kocer is leaving us. He was mightily productive: kicking off with Job Creators: 2023, then delivering his magnum opus Passport to Progress, before co-authoring the Risk Readiness Report 2023, Entrepreneurs Unwrapped, Building Blocks, and most recently Backing Breakthrough Businesses. Appropriately enough, his last report for us will be the forthcoming Job Creators: 2024. Beyond the reports, Derin’s smarts and joie de vivre have left a mark. As our latest Adviser he will continue to have a positive influence.
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