Yesterday we hosted Jonathan Reynolds, Secretary of State for Business and Trade, for the launch of our Backing Breakthrough Businesses report at the House of Lords. It was great to see many of you there, but I know for a fact most of you weren’t as the Cholmondeley Terrace would need to be the size of the Kop to fit you all in. As such, I wanted to share an overview of the speeches.
Lord McNicol of West Kilbride – or Iain, as he prefers – spoke first. He was General Secretary of Labour Party from 2011-2018, which must have been a challenging a leadership role. But as an experienced entrepreneur in his own right he had the skills to flourish.
Iain co-founded and is Chair of Rewired Earth – a Community Interest Company aiming to transform the way financial markets value sustainability. It lends in the subprime unsecured market, using Open Banking instead of credit reference agencies. Reflecting on our report, he echoed the challenge of scaling in the UK: “Two years ago, we wanted to scale the business. Nobody would touch us in the UK. Not the banks, not the VCs. We had to go to America, where we got the £40m to scale the business.”
He agreed with Valentina Kristensen in her video for the Commission where she said “we need to move away from dividend paying to growth capital.” He thinks we have a great opportunity with the Investment Summit on the 14th of October.
Jonathan Reynolds took the stage with a sobering reminder: while Britain boasts incredible entrepreneurs, something fundamental has shifted since the global financial crisis. He made the important point that while his constituents don’t tell him they’re specifically worried about growth being below the post-war trend, they are worried that their children won’t have the kind of opportunities that they had.
This point matters because previous governments struggled with the fundamentals – something we explain in more detail in our Building Blocks report.
Reynolds argued that Labour can offer stability: “It is not just about stability in terms of the Prime Minister staying the same and what happens between elections. It’s about policy stability as well as part of that. I do now have a vested interest in it, but I think the Business Secretary should last more than one year.”
Finally, Steve Rigby spoke in his role as Chair of the Private Business Commission. Steve is Co-CEO of Rigby Group, and a Patron of The Entrepreneurs Network. It was an uplifting speech: “We’re a £2.3 trillion economy. We’re the sixth largest in the world. We should be proud of what we are,” he said.
But there are headwinds, with recent surveys suggesting that business sentiment is slipping. Given the Budget is coming up, Steve made the case for a tax system that is both a carrot and stick: “if you’re an entrepreneur, you’re trying to grow your business, we also need an environment that allows us to do that.”
Hear, hear!
Misfits Matter
If you care about economic growth, stop what you’re doing and read (or listen) to this interview with James Phillips, who helped develop the UK’s rapid COVID testing and create the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA).
It covers a lot of ground, including letting ‘weirdos and misfits’ inside the government, the civil service efficiency and how we can end economic stagnation with a renewed approach to R&D. Here’s a taster:
“There’s a great quote from Colonel Boyd, ‘People, ideas, machines — in that order!’ Boyd was one of the reformers in the Pentagon in the 1970s, and he’s famous for the OODA loop concept of how fighter jets should engage in combat. That quote contrasts with how almost everything else in government is set up; it’s machines, ideas, and people, in that order. In the UK government, you’ve got your processes, or machines: consultations, reviews, and setting up a bureaucracy. Then once you have this set of tools, you say, ‘Okay, what's the idea?’ ’Well, we're going to look at net zero,’ or, ‘We’re going to look at some issue in tax.’ And then at the end of that, once you’ve got this relatively developed plan, you go out and find the person to run it.”
And something for those with an entrepreneurial mindset:
“Instead of saying, “Let’s do more stakeholder consultations, let's do more reviews,” the brilliant people say, “Actually, it’s pretty obvious what the answer is. Let’s just get on and do it.”
If this has piqued your interest, stay tuned for an interview coming soon on our Substack – sign up here.
Message from our partner
How do you turn adversity into opportunity? On Thursday 17 October, Charles Stanley is partnering with The Telegraph and special guest Sarah Beeny to discuss the secrets of being a seasoned entrepreneur.
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