About the session
The speaker discusses some of the disjoints in the UK business ecosystem. Despite cuts, the public sector-heavy economy is a burden on growth, where the bureaucracy required to administer some schemes costs more than the growth they were designed to generate. The Regional Growth Fund, for example, is expensive to adminster, but the jobs that have been created are mostly for accountants to carry out all the due diligence needed to qualify companies. Current policy-making is a trade-off between politics and economics, as business-generating policies are often shelved in place of more voter-friendly ones. Exporting to Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) needs to be a primary focus, and improvement needs to continue in this area after a British Chambers of Commerce survey of 8,000 companies across sectors showed that 32% were actively exporting in 2012 versus 22% in 2011. Despite his anti-public spending position, Mr Pellew advocated spending more on infrastructure. He cited the job creation in Essex that resulted from marine terminal operator DP World’s £1.5bn investment in London Gateway that will now be able to handle 3.5 million containers a year. This project will create 2,000 direct jobs and 5,000 indirectly, Pellew claimed.
