Conservative party conference: going for growth
Charlotte Pickles
Director
Director
What is the answer to struggling public services, crumbling public infrastructure, squeezed family finances, insecure and low paid work, and a geopolitical situation that demands increased defence spending?
Growth.
How to drive it was the subject of one of our panel events at Conservative party conference this week. Shadow Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury Gareth Davies, MP for the Weald of Kent Katie Lam, Cllr Abi Brown, and KPMG’s UK Head of Tax Policy Tim Sarson discussed what it would take to *really* go for growth.
From the fascinating and wide-ranging discussion, here are three take aways…
- Build on the fundamentals. Among the doom and gloom it’s easy to forget that the UK’s fundamentals are strong, and attractive to investors and business. We have several world-leading sectors, like life sciences, and we need to ensure they continue to grow – and that government creates the conditions for that.
- It’s not all about tax. Sure, it is partly about tax, but those conditions for investing go way beyond that. Businesses are not just thinking about the cost of investing, but the value of doing so in Britain. A skilled workforce, key infrastructure (yes, planning came up), and a government visibly and proactively pro-business are all key. As is political stability and certainty.
- Growth is place-based. Devolution offers significant opportunities for stimulating growth across the country, but to really achieve that, some degree of fiscal devolution is needed. Investment Zones allowed some flexibility, but Britain is an outlier in how little ability local areas have to raise revenue. More flexibility would not only enable locally tailored approaches appropriate to that particular local economy, but also ensure local gov has more ‘skin in the game’.