What do you think of the Enterprise Investment Schemes or Venture Capital Trusts? If you were a Member of Parliament back in 2017, odds are, you wouldn’t have heard of them: 61% weren’t aware of the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS), 54% were clueless about Venture Capital Trusts (VCTs), and 43% didn’t know their Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) from their elbow.

I’m not sure what percentage of the current crop of MPs would have heard of the schemes, but we’re acutely aware of how important they are to entrepreneurs.

That’s why we’ll soon put out a paper through the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Entrepreneurship on growth investment. To coincide with the launch, we’ll release a public letter highlighting the importance of these tax breaks to founders in the UK, while calling on the Government to pass the necessary legislation to continue and update the SEIS, EIS, and VCT schemes.

You can read the letter and join the hundreds of signatories by clicking here.

Dividend Payments
The economist Jonathan Haskel has calculated the cost of Brexit. The Professor of Economics at Imperial College Business School and external member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee has worked out that without Brexit, GDP in 2022 would have been 1.3% higher, which is equivalent to a £29bn shortfall. “There are roughly 28m households in the UK, so that’s equivalent to about £1,000 per household.”

This isn’t an attempt to reopen Brexit wounds. Whatever side you were on, you should be hoping that the Prime Minister is successful in striking a deal on the Northern Ireland Protocol. Yet, reality is biting hard. Perhaps it’s time to put the long-forgotten EEA (‘Norway’) Option back on the table.

Inclusive Innovation Forum
Morgan Stanley, who are our partners on the Inclusive Innovation Forum, have just opened up applications for their Inclusive Ventures Lab. It’s their in-house startup accelerator promoting financial inclusion that provided underrepresented entrepreneurs of tech and tech-enabled startups with much-needed access to capital. Importantly, it comes with £250,000 in cash from Morgan Stanley.

Launched in New York in 2017, and expanded to London in 2021 with participants from all over the world, it has helped raise in excess of $150m additional funding for the 69 companies that have participated.

Find out more here.