The All-Party Parliamentary Group for Entrepreneurship is back!

We are relaunching the APPG in the House of Lords on Tuesday morning with Andrew Griffith MP, the Prime Minister's Chief Business Adviser. You might still be able to get a ticket if you’re quick.

Lord Leigh of Hurley, who is a successful entrepreneur in his own right having co-founded Cavendish Corporate Finance, and Bim Afolami MP, touted by the BBC as a rising star, have joined as Officers. We also have loads of new MPs and Peers as Members.

We are the Secretariat of the APPG, which means it’s our job to help ensure Parliament and the Lords are kept updated about what entrepreneurs need to thrive. To this end, we will be hosting a series of roundtables on all matters related to entrepreneurship – all of which will be written up into snappy briefing papers to inform policymakers. We will build sponsored roundtables around core activity based on the brilliant research of the Enterprise Research Centre (ERC). Get in touch if you want to get involved.

We don't want to hog the APPG. It should be for everyone supporting entrepreneurs. That's why the APPG will launch the research of other organisations' doing interesting work on entrepreneurship. First up, the APPG is co-hosting an event with Lord Howard Flight and the Enterprise Investment Scheme Association (EISA) on this vital tax break for entrepreneurs. Drop Mark Brownridge an email to enquire about a place. And watch this space for a paper launch with Tech Nation.

You can read the minutes from the APPG AGM minutes here.

Factory tax
This week, our Research Director Sam Dumtiru had a report out on full expensing – making the case for abolishing the so-called 'Factory Tax'.

We are currently ranked 33rd in the OECD on the Tax Foundation’s Capital Cost Recovery index, discouraging entrepreneurs investing in capital. This is hitting manufacturers in the Midlands and North particularly hard (hence calling it the 'factory tax').

For over two decades, the UK has had the lowest level of private investment in fixed capital as a share of GDP in the G7. This can be turned around by letting businesses fully deduct the costs of investments in equipment by accounting for inflation and a real return on capital.

Allowing businesses to immediately write-off capital expenditures would boost investment by 8.1% and labour productivity by 3.54% (£2,214 per worker).

In the Telegraph (Paywall), Ryan Bourne backs Sam's plan, and The Times (Paywall) is convinced, concluding that the new Chancellor, “Mr Sunak will come across worse ideas.”

In a spin
Our friends at Beauhurst have revealed that investment into university spinouts declined in 2019 (£1.24 billion), compared to 2018 (£1.38 billion).

The drop-off – which isn’t reflected in overall equity investment activity – has been particularly acute for foreign investors. “The UK’s spinouts secured fewer deals with international investors in 2019 compared to the previous two years, and the value of the deals they were involved also declined. Most foreign-backed deals were backed by US funds, but even these investors halved their deal activity compared to last year.:

Hopefully it's a blip, not a trend.