The Home Office is having a bit of a mad one.
Yesterday, without warning, it scrapped the UK’s Tier 1 Investor Visa. While the government has been right to scrutinise the route, its failures have been due to the Home Office not properly regulating and overseeing the route. There was an opportunity to reform it to support entrepreneurs – instead, they’ve thrown out the baby, bathwater, the bath, the kitchen sink and their toys out of the pram.
The Home Office is also currently looking at the Innovator Visa, the main route for entrepreneurs. Given yesterday’s announcement and various rumours, I’m pretty sure they’ll mess that up too.
That’s not all. Earlier in the week the FT revealed that the Home Office is planning to demand tech companies block ‘legal but harmful’ posts as part of the Online Safety bill. While this might be aimed at the likes of Google and Facebook, it would hit thousands of tech startups that host user-generated content online, including travel review sites and food delivery marketplaces, as well as personal messages.
Camilla de Coverly Veale of Coadec has written about why the proposals risk crippling the UK’s internet economy. As she notes, by the Government’s own estimates the new regime will affect 24,000 businesses, the overwhelming majority of which are small and micro platforms.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Coadec also has a report out today on the wider threat of the Online Safety Bill. For example, businesses would be required to proactively monitor user-to-user interactions, which would require data collection, storage and use in explicit breach of both the UK and EU GDPR’s standards. This would end our data adequacy status with the EU, which allows the free flow of personal data between jurisdictions.
The Government’s own estimates suggest that a loss of data adequacy would cost £1.4 billion in compliance costs, and Coadec estimates that all the proposals add up to a crippling £2.5 billion a year. This doesn’t just put us out of step with the US and Europe – it puts us on another planet.
I’m starting to think the New Statement’s John Elledge might be right. Maybe it’s time to abolish the Home Office.
Foundational Thinking
Regular readers will already know about Strong Foundations – our case for why the UK’s housing shortage is denting our entrepreneurial ambitions.
Over 60 of UK's most ambitious entrepreneurs backed it in a letter in The Telegraph, which argued that talent is being priced out of our most productive cities. As author Aria Babu writes in City AM, Britain’s productivity has been battered by the scarcity of affordable homes. She builds on these thoughts in CapX, explaining why there is something special about clusters, and why they’re essential to the levelling up agenda:
“If we want to level up, then policymakers have to understand and exploit the economics of clusters – not ignore them. Part of the reason the UK’s left behind regions are poorer is that we have ignored these truths. Many of our cities lack adequate infrastructure and are badly connected, which means they function less like a city than a collection of small towns. Leeds, for example, is the largest city in Europe without a metro system, meaning potential benefits of agglomeration are remaining unrealised. One stark statistic illustrates this well: in the UK only 40% of people who live in big cities can reach their city centre within half an hour. In Europe 67% can.”
Aria was also interviewed on GB News about it, I wrote about the report for Forbes and the New Statesman picked up on Aria’s paper in reference to Kirstie Allsopp’s embarrassing interview with the Sunday Times.
So what next? There are opportunities in the upcoming Levelling Up Bill for some of the recommendations in the report. Namely: instituting Street Votes, liberalising Green Belt rules, building more public transport, making it easier to convert properties between different use classes, allowing high quality micro home projects, and trialling community land auctions.
You can still back the report here, which will take a few seconds. And spread the word by retweeting this Twitter thread, sharing through other social media, or just forwarding this email on to others.
Calling Female Founders: Wales & Southampton
We aim to bridge the gap between entrepreneurs and policymakers. We do this on many levels but the bluntest, and sometimes most effective approach, is simply putting smart entrepreneurs in the room with politicians.
To that end, as part of our Female Founders Forum we run with Barclays, we have a virtual event with Virginia Crosbie MP next week from 12.30pm to 2pm. It is focused on Wales, so if you’re based there, do business there or have an interest in the country, this is for you. Just let Katrina know if you want to come and she will send a calendar invite.
Next month, we have Rt Hon Caroline Nokes MP for an in-person roundtable in Southampton. Caroline is chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, which examines the work of the Government Equalities Office and holds the Government to account on equality law and policy. This is our first event in Southampton, so we could really do with your help in sharing with entrepreneurs in and around the city. Once again, just let Katrina know if you want to come and she will send a calendar invite.
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