tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15518083303697468722024-03-12T19:43:13.655-07:00Labour Small Business ForumNetwork of Labour members and supporters who work for themselves or for a small businessLabour Small Business Forumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17887788566020306579noreply@blogger.comBlogger24125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1551808330369746872.post-58776688460794502232014-10-02T03:23:00.002-07:002014-10-02T03:23:38.301-07:00LFIG Report: The Freelancing Agenda<header class="entry-header" style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Raleway; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px; overflow: auto; padding: 0px;"><div class="entry-meta" style="background-color: transparent !important; border-bottom-color: rgb(249, 249, 249); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 5px;">
<span class="posted-on" style="background-color: transparent !important; border-right-color: rgb(249, 249, 249); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px 5px 0px 0px; padding: 5px 7px 5px 2px;">Updated on <a href="http://lfig.org/news/lfig-report-the-freelancing-agenda/" rel="bookmark" style="-webkit-transition: all 200ms linear; color: #666666; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none !important; transition: all 200ms linear;"><time class="entry-date published" datetime="2014-09-17T19:24:07+00:00" style="background-color: transparent !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">September 17, 2014</time></a></span><span class="byline" style="background-color: transparent !important; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px 5px 0px 0px; padding: 5px 5px 5px 2px;">by <span class="foundicon-people icon" style="background-color: transparent !important; background-image: none; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: repeat; color: #e9200e; display: inline; font-size: 14px; height: auto; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 5px; position: relative; top: 2px; vertical-align: baseline; width: auto;"></span><span class="author vcard" style="background-color: transparent !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><a class="url fn n" href="http://lfig.org/author/lfig/" style="-webkit-transition: all 200ms linear; color: #666666; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none !important; transition: all 200ms linear;">LFIG Editor</a> - From LFIG website</span></span></div>
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<div style="-webkit-transition: all 200ms linear; color: #666666; font-family: Raleway; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; text-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 0px 1px 1px; transition: all 200ms linear;">
<strong style="font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="http://lfig.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/freelancers1.png" style="-webkit-transition: all 200ms linear; color: #e9200e; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none !important; transition: all 200ms linear;"><img alt="freelancers" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-3718" height="180" src="http://lfig.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/freelancers1.png" style="border: 0px; display: inline; float: left; height: auto; margin: 0px 1.5em 1.5em 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: middle;" width="180" /></a>A new LFIG report calls for freelancing to be placed at the heart of the Labour party’s policy agenda. “Freelancers and the self-employed deserve to have their own policy agenda and framework” says Philip Ross author of the new Labour Finance and Industry Report entitled ‘The Freelancing Agenda’ and he suggests that. “Labour is a strong position now to lead on this agenda”.</strong></div>
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<a href="http://lfig.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/LFIG-Freelancing-Agenda-a4-12SEP14.pdf" style="-webkit-transition: all 200ms linear; color: #e9200e; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none !important; transition: all 200ms linear;" target="_blank">The report</a>, published on Monday 15<sup style="font-size: 11px; line-height: 0; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;">th</sup> September, will be followed by a special fringe event launch at the <a href="http://laboursmallbusinessforum.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/innovation-and-digital-economy.html" style="-webkit-transition: all 200ms linear; color: #e9200e; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none !important; transition: all 200ms linear;">Labour conference</a>. It aims to construct a policy framework by proposing a charter for freelancing along with three other key policies designed to empower freelancers and bring them the recognition they deserve.</div>
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The report is published as a short booklet, it looks at the size of the freelance economy, the lack of definition and recognition that freelancing faces and the evolution of the market. The report recognises that freelancers range from precariat workers through to independent professionals but there is commonality between all the groups. It discusses the evolution of the freelancing market, the need for agency freelancers to use limited liability companies. It differentiates genuine freelancers from those using the model for tax avoidance and those in forced self employment. One of the recommendations includes a well thought out proposal to create a special freelancer limited company (FLTD) which it suggests will allow some of the onerous and unachievable requirements of IR35 to be toned down.</div>
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The LFIG report has been written with Prof. Andrew Burke who holds the Bettany Chair and is the founding Director of the Bettany Centre for Entrepreneurship at Cranfield University. Philip Ross is a former freelancer and a well known writer and activist on freelancing issues. He is a member of LFIG and the author of the book about the founding of the PCG – Freedom to Freelance.</div>
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Philip Ross, explains “the report was able to build on both our personal experience and professional knowledge of the freelancing industry and has been supplemented by meetings with freelancer groups, trade associations and trade unions”.</div>
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“We have spoken to actors, journalists, artists, pharmacists, IT workers, management consultants, construction workers, teachers, film and television workers, agencies, accountants, tax specialists and more besides”.</div>
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“For too long policies of all parties have focused on the extremes of the freelance economy, tax avoidance on one hand and forced self employment on the other. This report focuses on the forgotten middle, genuine freelancers, a market that is as broad as it is wide. It offers a proactive agenda as opposed to reactionary one that will help freelancing flourish.</div>
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The report offers the chance for Labour to seize the initiative and clearly differentiate itself as the most progressive and innovative party in this area”.</div>
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“The key message from the report is for policy makers to take freelancing seriously, and we have named the report ‘The Freelancing Agenda’ because it is about starting that debate and discussion around freelancing issues and what needs to be done”</div>
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The report and recommendations are centred on a radical and innovative Freelancers’ Charter.</div>
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Philip Ross says “The objective of the Charter is to provide a platform or operating model upon which future policy can be developed for freelancers. Such that one could consider individual polices to be the Apps that would operate on the platform.”</div>
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“Just as Apple wrote the platform and got others to write the apps, our aim with the report is to provide a platform upon which others can engage and be empowered and develop policies”</div>
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“We have made a start too and issued the report with a few of our own policies or Apps and these include the creation of a Freelancing Limited Company and the appointment of a Minister with direct responsibility for freelancers. We’d encourage other organisations and groups to develop their apps or policies to work from the platform.”</div>
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“We have adopted this approach because we acknowledge that freelancing has a wide constituency with independent professionals at one end and precariat workers at the other. We wanted to create a platform to enable others to innovate on”.</div>
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“Above all, the Freelancing Agenda aims to kick start a proper and informed debate to help Labour build a new economy that recognises and levers the power of the freelancers and the self employed to deliver prosperity”.</div>
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“I know it has radical elements, the voice of freelancers and the self-employed need to be heard and this and report set to empower them and the enable a future Labour government to deliver for them”. Says Philip</div>
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<strong style="font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="http://lfig.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/LFIG-Freelancing-Agenda-a4-12SEP14.pdf" style="-webkit-transition: all 200ms linear; color: #e9200e; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none !important; transition: all 200ms linear;" target="_blank">Download the report</a> (PDF)</strong></div>
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Philip Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05378828149399947174noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1551808330369746872.post-16845174373471160482014-10-02T03:22:00.001-07:002014-10-02T03:22:18.758-07:00Self-Employed Face Strong “Cost of Living” Headwinds<header class="entry-header" style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Raleway; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px; overflow: auto; padding: 0px;"><h1 class="entry-title" style="-webkit-transition: all 200ms linear; color: #fc3a51; font-size: 26px; font-weight: 500; height: auto; line-height: 30px; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px !important; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; transition: all 200ms linear;">
<span class="posted-on" style="background-color: transparent !important; border-right-color: rgb(249, 249, 249); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; color: #666666; font-size: 12px; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px 5px 0px 0px; padding: 5px 7px 5px 2px;">Posted on <a href="http://lfig.org/self-employed-face-strong-cost-of-living-headwinds/" rel="bookmark" style="-webkit-transition: all 200ms linear; color: #666666; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none !important; transition: all 200ms linear;"><time class="entry-date published" datetime="2014-09-11T23:13:18+00:00" style="background-color: transparent !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">September 11, 2014</time></a></span><span class="byline" style="background-color: transparent !important; color: #666666; font-size: 12px; line-height: 20px; margin: 0px 5px 0px 0px; padding: 5px 5px 5px 2px;">by <span class="foundicon-people icon" style="background-color: transparent !important; background-image: none; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: repeat; color: #e9200e; display: inline; font-size: 14px; height: auto; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 5px; position: relative; top: 2px; vertical-align: baseline; width: auto;"></span><span class="author vcard" style="background-color: transparent !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><a class="url fn n" href="http://lfig.org/author/philipross/" style="-webkit-transition: all 200ms linear; color: #666666; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none !important; transition: all 200ms linear;">Philip Ross</a> - From the LFIG website</span></span></h1>
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<a href="http://lfig.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/philipross-andrewburke-lfig.png" style="-webkit-transition: all 200ms linear; color: #e9200e; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none !important; transition: all 200ms linear;"><img alt="lfig ross burke freelancers" class="size-medium wp-image-3682" height="260" src="http://lfig.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/philipross-andrewburke-lfig-300x260.png" style="border: 0px none; height: auto; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: middle;" width="300" /></a><div class="wp-caption-text" style="-webkit-transition: all 200ms linear; font-size: 11px; line-height: 14.1750001907349px; padding: 5px; text-align: left; text-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0980392) 0px 1px 1px; transition: all 200ms linear;">
We need a government minister with direct responsibility for freelancers</div>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Almost every week I seem to come across a story in the press about some super executives and their mega salaries which are meekly justified by their board members who insist that they are worth the money.</strong></div>
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The myth is that the recovery is being driven by some sort of battalion of super star executives. The reality I feel is somewhat different. This isn’t a recovery led by the genius of these superstars but by working people from the ground, the vanguard of which are the self-employed.</div>
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According to the ONS monthly Labour force survey, self-employment accounts for almost two-fifths (38%) of new jobs created since 2010 and the self employed make up almost one in six of those in work. Indeed, the <a href="http://www.thersa.org/about-us/media/press-releases/numbers-of-self-employed-set-to-outstrip-public-sector-workers" style="-webkit-transition: all 200ms linear; color: #e9200e; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none !important; transition: all 200ms linear;" target="_blank">RSA recently reported that the number of people working as self employed</a> is set to out strip those working in the public sector by 2016.</div>
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Unfortunately unlike our battalion of super hero executives the self-employed have not fared well in the cost of living crisis since 2010. According to analysis done by Labour their incomes have fallen on average by £2,000 a year. None of us in regular employment have done that well, with <a href="http://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/7274" style="-webkit-transition: all 200ms linear; color: #e9200e; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none !important; transition: all 200ms linear;" target="_blank">incomes falling by 9%</a> but for the self-employed it is a fall of 14%.</div>
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Labour has had to do its own analysis because the ONS figures don’t include it, so Rachel Reeves and Chuka Umunna have written to Sir Andrew Dilnot, Chairman of the UK Statistics Authority, to ask him to examine whether new measures are needed to fully take into account the earnings of self-employed people.</div>
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The world of work is changing with this growth in self-employment which includes those setting up traditional businesses as well as those working freelance. Springing up all over the country are a large number of workspaces or hubs where the self-employed can come and work in a collective workspace.</div>
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Some, I know, bury their heads in the sand and insist there should only be permanent full time jobs for everyone. Though people can support that sentiment, the reality is that people have lost faith in many of our institutions and the ability of business to provide them work and so are moving towards self employment for both economic and personal reasons.</div>
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I met people at one of these hubs who said they would like permanent employment, but there aren’t any jobs so they are working for themselves. Yet, they noted, they feel ignored by policy makers who only pay attention to the margins of what they do by just focusing on those abusing self employment for tax avoidance or those being exploited by being forced into self employment.</div>
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They want recognition, as they feel like the forgotten middle who are marginalised and outside the system. They are not employees so the unions tend to see past them or even see them as a threat. They are not all super rich, as the statistic show quite the opposite and many need to interface with the benefits system.</div>
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This policy agenda and constituency hasn’t gone unnoticed. The report published by Labour’s Small Business Task Force in March 2013 (An Enterprising Nation) identified that more work needed to be done on the freelancing agenda. As a result LFIG commissioned myself, Philip Ross, as a former freelancer and Prof Andrew Burke from Cranfield University to develop the report.</div>
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The report was able to build on both our personal experience and professional knowledge of the freelancing industry and has been supplemented by meetings with freelancer groups, trade associations and trade unions.</div>
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The key message from the report is for policy makers to take freelancing seriously, and we have named the report ‘The Freelancer Agenda’ because it is about starting that debate and discussion around freelancing issues and what needs to be done.</div>
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The report and recommendations are centred around a radical and innovative ‘Freelancers’ Charter’. The objective of the Charter is to provide a platform or operating model upon which future policy can be developed for freelancers. Such that one could consider individual polices to be the Apps that would operate on the platform. I did this because I felt that we should learn the lessons from business where Apple and others realised that success can come from developing the platform upon which others can develop the Apps. So it should be for policies.</div>
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We have made a start too and issued the report with a few of our own policies or Apps and these include the creation of a Freelancing Limited Company and the appointment of a Minister with direct responsibility for freelancers. We’d encourage other organisations and groups to develop their apps or policies to work from the platform.</div>
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We have adopted this approach because we acknowledge that freelancing has a wide constituency with independent professionals at one end and precariat workers at the other. We wanted to create a platform to enable others to innovate on.</div>
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There is a shared agenda for freelancers and a lot common purpose between all groups. I hope that this report can help all groups come together and build an agenda for the common good.</div>
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<em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Philip Ross is a member of the Labour Finance and Industry Group.</em></div>
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Note: The report will be formally launched at the LFIG fringe meeting at the Labour conference on Tuesday 23rd September at 5:30pm, though the report is available from the LFIG website as from 16th September.</div>
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Philip Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05378828149399947174noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1551808330369746872.post-67669684386203145652014-09-17T06:36:00.001-07:002014-09-17T06:36:35.692-07:00Put freelancers at the heart of policy making<br />
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<i>LFIG have published their new report entitled 'The Freelancing Agenda' this article explains the reasoning behind the report and the need for Labour to focus on the self employed as well as small business.</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBbI9tuJwZG0_AJ7Ir2AF0H7feVLtPgIIu1NAhMNYg3wTSy8Y7A5QOKF2TuQh0qXyr-3XEAqLnbZuFJ7w6vXjDq2g4YEbq_CkXN7g-G27fRvuG4rCveAtur2b9PHq5LVfHt3nZ-PKTScUF/s1600/LFIG-COVER-small.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBbI9tuJwZG0_AJ7Ir2AF0H7feVLtPgIIu1NAhMNYg3wTSy8Y7A5QOKF2TuQh0qXyr-3XEAqLnbZuFJ7w6vXjDq2g4YEbq_CkXN7g-G27fRvuG4rCveAtur2b9PHq5LVfHt3nZ-PKTScUF/s1600/LFIG-COVER-small.jpg" /></a>Labour must be the party both of and for the self employed
and small business if it is to win the next election. It is on strong ground as
it has an excellent Labour Business team who are widely respected. Labour’s
grassroots are being filled with those who run their own businesses, work as
self employed or as freelance. It is growing to become a key constituency both
within the Labour party and within society. <span style="background: white; color: #555555; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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In March 2013, Labour’s <b>Small
Business Task Force</b> report, ‘<a href="http://www.labourbisteam.org.uk/labour-launches-small-business-taskforce-report---an-enterprisin"><i>An Enterprising Nation’</i></a><i>,</i> made recommendations to the Labour
Party for policies to help small businesses. The report looked in part at
freelancing and self-employment, and suggested that <i>‘greater clarity around the distinction between genuine freelancing and
false self-employment is required to enable small businesses to use
freelancers legitimately’.</i> <span style="background: white; color: #555555; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGJQD6yeaNoGGWunRiSG8LM8IwaoPISvLNaGZBYUkihst8MTrPrS8G3D3ulrbMgQBHBcg4Gk0CC405nRtMIyKn5DE6EDqfQfzOfnwHtqGscGpMbX07HsTpq-weONHjARO4cf9hUysul25k/s1600/philipross-andrewburke-lfig-small.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGJQD6yeaNoGGWunRiSG8LM8IwaoPISvLNaGZBYUkihst8MTrPrS8G3D3ulrbMgQBHBcg4Gk0CC405nRtMIyKn5DE6EDqfQfzOfnwHtqGscGpMbX07HsTpq-weONHjARO4cf9hUysul25k/s1600/philipross-andrewburke-lfig-small.jpg" height="278" width="320" /></a>The publication of our report entitled ‘The Freelancing Agenda’, commissioned
by the Labour Finance and Industry Group, comes partly in response to
that. It offers a set of principles, in the form of a Charter, and some
specific policy recommendations, including a new definition of freelancing for
tax and other purposes, that can help Labour to update its policies for this
constituency, by enhancing, not compromising, the party’s core values. Labour needs to offer both a small
business agenda and also one for the self employed too.<span style="background: white; color: #555555; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Last week Demos published a report in this area entitled ‘<a href="http://www.demos.co.uk/projects/goingitalone">Going it alone’</a>, its
author Duncan O’Leary noted that “<span style="background: white;">The Labour
party has an uneasy relationship with self-employment. Fears of tax evasion by
high earners and the<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><a href="http://touchstoneblog.org.uk/2012/12/false-self-employment-the-scandal-hitting-workers-and-taxpayers/"><span style="background: white; border: none windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0cm; padding: 0cm;">exploitation</span></a><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white;"> </span></span><span style="background: white;">of low earners dominate the party’s discourse. The
policy focus is on stamping out abuse, rather than supporting those for whom
self-employment is an active choice”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;">These are the goals of our
freelancers’ charter. To provide a positive agenda for the self employed that
Labour can embrace. </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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Our report is published as a short booklet, it looks at the size of
the freelance economy, the lack of definition and recognition that freelancing
faces and the evolution of the market. The report recognises that freelancers
range from precariat workers through to independent professionals but there is
commonality between all the groups. It discusses the evolution of the
freelancing market and the need for agency freelancers to use limited liability
companies. It differentiates genuine freelancers from those using the model for
tax avoidance and those in forced self employment. One of the recommendations
includes a well thought out proposal to create a special freelancer limited
company (FLTD) which it suggests will allow some of the onerous and
unachievable requirements of IR35 to be toned down and will allow for clearer
identification of freelancers.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="background: white;">We
see the Charter as </span>providing a
platform or operating model upon which future policy can be developed for
freelancers. Such that one could consider individual polices to be the Apps
that would operate on the platform.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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We have made a start too and issued the report with a few of our own
policies or Apps and these include the creation of this Freelancing Limited
Company (FLTD) and the appointment of a Minister with direct responsibility for
freelancers.<o:p></o:p></div>
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It is timely because the ONS
have reported that the growth in self employment outstrips new jobs<a href="file:///C:/Users/pross/Documents/dell-laptop/laptop2/private/freelancers-lfig/LFIG-launch-article.docx#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>.Mike
Cherry the Policy Chairman for the FSB has said that it represents a
‘structural change’ in the labour market and is here to stay. T<span style="background: white;">he<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><a href="http://www.thersa.org/about-us/media/press-releases/numbers-of-self-employed-set-to-outstrip-public-sector-workers"><span style="background: white; border: none windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0cm; padding: 0cm;">RSA recently reported</span></a><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white;"> </span></span><span style="background: white;">that the number of people working as self-employed is
set to outstrip those working in the public sector by 2016.</span> <o:p></o:p></div>
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To write the report we have spoken to individuals and groups
representing actors, journalists, artists, pharmacists, IT workers, management
consultants, construction workers, teachers, film and television workers,
agencies, accountants, tax specialists and more besides. Interestingly the two consistent
issues coming through are for .’clarity and parity’. For the independent
professionals this is clarity over their status as self-employed and parity
with other businesses also competing for business. They want to the chance to
compete fairly and be judged as being in business on their own account. For the
precariat workers and others they want parity with other workers when they have
to interface with the benefits system and clarity over how they can receive fair
treatment at work. All sight the right to be paid and the right to be paid on
time as key requirements. While it is outrageous to pay wages late large firms
seems to get away with the late payment of small businesses.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Our report concludes that
freelancers are not small businesses in the traditional sense, that they are
instead their own economic agents often with premium and important skills which
have allowed small firms to innovate and grow. That they are drivers of
economic growth. I see that in effect just as every small shop doesn’t want to
be the next Tesco’s not every IT freelancer wants to be the next Google. The
growth isn’t in their own businesses but elsewhere in the economy. They are not
a competing shadow workforce but positive complementary one which deserves
recognition and be protected and nurtured.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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There
is a shared agenda for freelancers and a lot common purpose between all groups.
I hope that this report can help all groups come together and build a positive
agenda for the common good. The
LFIG report offers the chance for Labour to seize the initiative and clearly
differentiate itself as the most progressive and innovative party in this area
and clearly identify itself as for the party for the self-employed. We
encourage you to read the report, review the charter and help put the issue of freelancing
and the self-employed on the agenda for the general election.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext 1.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 0cm 0cm 1.0pt 0cm; padding: 0cm;">
<i>Philip Ross is a member of LFIG and the lead author the report ‘The
Freelancing Agenda’. <o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
</div>
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<span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">A PDF copy of the report can be found on the Labour Finance
and Industry website or </span><a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwGKLY5OG6OXSEJYdlhjN2NjT00/edit?usp=sharing"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">here</span></a><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Freelancing-Agenda-Philip-Ross-ebook/dp/B00NJ5CFUQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=undefined&sr=1-1&keywords=freelancing+agenda"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">A kindle
copy of the report</span></a><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"> can be found on Amazon and </span><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/andrew-burke-and-philip-ross/the-freelancing-agenda/paperback/product-21802758.html"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">printed
copy here</span></a><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/pross/Documents/dell-laptop/laptop2/private/freelancers-lfig/LFIG-launch-article.docx#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> http://www.cipd.co.uk/pm/peoplemanagement/b/weblog/archive/2014/02/20/growth-in-self-employment-outstrips-new-jobs-shows-ons-data.aspx<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
</div>
Philip Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05378828149399947174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1551808330369746872.post-69300160307519020532014-07-14T02:09:00.001-07:002014-08-29T09:10:29.486-07:00Innovation and the Digital Economy: Empowering Freelancers and small business to deliver prosperity<i>At this year's Labour Conference in 2014 the Forum is working with the Labour Finance and Industry Group to host a fringe meeting again on small business.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>For the third year running the premium small business event will be run by LFIG and the LSBF. Our small business event is a Labour small business event in so far as it put on by party members, the forum and LFIG who are Labour supporters and members. </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>This year's theme is the digital economy, small business and freelancers.</i><br />
<br />
<span style="color: red; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Tuesday 23rd September 2014</span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="color: red; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">RadissonBlue Edwardian Hotel. <br />
Dickens\Thackery Room</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">5:25pm – Introduction by David Offenbach, Chairman of LFIG.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Part 1: Freelancers
in the Progressive Economy<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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5:30 – 5:55pm<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>This will be the
conference launch of LFIG’s report on freelancing for a progressive economy.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i>Summary details of the
report will be detail with comment from a panel of freelancing experts plus
Labour’s Chair of the Business Interest Group.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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Chaired by Karen Landles LFIG<br />
Philip Ross LFIG (Report’s author)<br />
Seema Malhotra MP -
Chair of Labour Business Interest Group<br />
Duncan O’Leary – DEMOS<span style="color: red;"><br />
Benedict Dellot - Royal Society of Arts. (invited)<br />
</span>Simon McVicker PCG<br />
<5 minute BREAK><o:p></o:p></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Part 2a: Startups and Small Business – delivering
digital transformation<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b>6:00 – 7:00pm<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<i>This is the main event
with a key note address from Labour’s small business minister.<br />
3-5 minutes for each panel member, summed up by Toby Perkins. Then 30 minutes of
questions from the floor. <o:p></o:p></i></div>
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Chair : Philip Ross LFIG<br />
Toby Perkins MP – Shadow Small Business Minister<br />
Richard Howitt MEP<br />
Mike Cherry - Policy Chair of the Federation
of Small Business<br />
Bill Thomas – Chair of Labour’s small business taskforce<br />
Seema Malhotra MP -
Chair of Labour Business Interest Group<br />
Kate Godfrey PPC for Stafford<br />
<br />
John Midgley (Head of Public Policy, Intuit UK)<br />
James Waterworth (Vice President, CCIA Europe)<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Part 2b :
Open mic on small business and digital transformation<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b>Time : 7:05 – 7:30<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<b><br /></b></div>
<br />
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<i>Open mic for audience
to pitch ideas to previous panel on digital economy, freelancing and small
business issues. </i></div>
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<i><span style="color: red;"><br /></span></i></div>
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Chaired by Ajay Nehru of LFIG<br />
#LFIGDigital #LFIG-OpenMic2014<i><o:p></o:p></i></div>
Philip Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05378828149399947174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1551808330369746872.post-34834712301890045942013-09-27T03:06:00.002-07:002013-09-27T03:06:22.749-07:00Party conference buzzes with small business debate<div class="MsoNormal">
Small business is growing big at conference both in the hall
on Labour’s policy agenda and on the fringe. When Ed Miliband declared in his
conference speech - ‘One Nation Labour – the party of small business’ it was
less of an aspiration and more of an observation. Much credit is due to Labour’s
excellent business team - including not
just Chuka Umanna (who was raised in small business household) but Toby Perkins
and Ian Murray who both ran their own firms before entering Parliament - and an
energising team supporting them. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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In March the ‘An Enterprising Nation’ report published by Labour’s
Small Business Task Force recommended the introduction of regional banks to
support small business but was also ‘fizzing’ with other new ideas and looking
at the whole scale of small business innovation and activity from the large
small firms down to importance of the freelance worker to the economy.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Ed’s conference speech noted that ‘For too long in this
country, we’ve supported some businesses and not others. Most of the jobs of
the future are going to be created in a large number of small businesses’. He explained
that since Tories came to office they ‘cut taxes for large business by £6bn but
raised taxes on small businesses’ and that they had short changed small firms
and to put it right announced that Labour will cancel a 1% reduction in
corporation tax that would have benefited a small number of large business and
instead offer a cut in business rates which will benefit 1.5m small firms by at
least £450 a year each. <o:p></o:p></div>
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If the policy announcements in the hall were demonstrating
Labour is the party <i><span style="color: red;">for</span></i> small business, then the conference fringe
showed that it is becoming the party <i><span style="color: red;">of</span></i> small business. Gone are the days when the only
small business fringe events are held by external groups.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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Progress hosted an
excellent fringe event on Monday with Toby Perkins MP. The main point of the
event with Shawbrook bank was about getting funding to small business.
Shawbrook’s stated modus operandi is not to feed figures into a computer and
get an answer but to make decisions based on getting to know a business. Beyond
this there was discussion about the need for better mentoring between small
business people, some of which has been lost since 2010.<o:p></o:p></div>
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On Tuesday LFIG and the Labour Small Business Forum’s event
sponsored by the Process and Packaging Machinery Association realised that they
needed a big room for small business after their fringe event became standing
room only with 70+ and others unable to fit in. I chaired the meeting and we
began with a large Labour panel - Toby Perkins MP, Bill Thomas - Chair of
Labour’s Small Business Taskforce, Victoria Groulef - PPC Reading West, Debbie
Abrahams MP chair of the all-party inquiry into late payments <link to
progress article> and Prof. Andrew Burke - self-employment and freelancing -
from Cranfield University, though independent was a member of Labour’s small
business taskforce.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The discussion was wide ranging, also touching on the issues
of funding and mentoring but also included the role and importance of
freelancers in the economy to the issue of late payments and the need for small
business to have a higher profile in a future - something that seems to be
clearly on the cards.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Some panel members asked to leave early for another function
so in demonstrating our understanding of flexible working we let them go and
brought in as freelance replacements : Mike Cherry National Policy Chairman
from the FSB and Simon McVicker of the PCG. <o:p></o:p></div>
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There is a real appetite for this discussion in the Labour
party and the future candidates programme is also delivering small business
candidates at the next general election - though a few more are needed. But the
most rewarding part of the meetings was the realisation that the majority of
the attendees and all the questions came from delegates and Labour party
members. On the evidence of conference alone Labour is clearly becoming both
the party of and for small business.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
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<br />
Philip Ross<br />
Labour Small Business Forum and LFIG<br />
The LFIG fringe event was kindly sponsored by the Process and Packaging
Machinery Association<o:p></o:p></div>
Labour Small Business Forumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17887788566020306579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1551808330369746872.post-7805177557699877012013-09-25T07:40:00.001-07:002013-09-25T07:46:39.877-07:00LFIG \ LSBF Fringe event packed out Last night's fringe event with LFIG on small business was packed out. We need a bigger room next year.<br />
<br />
Many thanks to the <a href="http://www.ppma.co.uk/">PPMA </a>for sponsoring the event<br />
<br />
Some of the speakers had to leave early because of the conference dinner so we rolled Mike Cherry, National Policy Chairman from the FSB and Simon McVicker onto the panel as it discussed issues ranging from freelancing to late payments.<br />
<br />
Some pictures below and further report to follow...<br />
<br />
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<br />Labour Small Business Forumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17887788566020306579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1551808330369746872.post-16171964209271500822013-09-16T06:36:00.000-07:002013-09-16T06:36:01.865-07:00Top Labour fringe on small business - Tuesday 24th September<div>
Once again the LSBF and LFIG are leading the way at the Labour conference with a major fringe event promoting small business. This year Toby Perkins MP, small business minister speaks again as well as Bill Thomas chairman of Labour's small business task force along with Prof, Andrew Burke from Cranfield University who will speak about the importance of freelancers.</div>
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<b>An Enterprising Nation—How Small Firms, Freelancers and Self-Employed can Flourish Under Labour</b></div>
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<b>Time: 18:30-20:00 (Hilton Brighton Metropole Hotel—Surrey Suite 1), Tuesday 24th September 2013</b></div>
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Twitter: #EnterpriseNation</div>
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Featuring:</div>
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Philip Ross (Labour Small Business Forum – Chair)</div>
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Toby Perkins MP (Shadow Minister for Small Busiensses)</div>
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Victoria Groulef (Labour PPC for Reading West)</div>
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Bill Thomas (Chairman of Labour's small business task force)</div>
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Andrew Burke (Labour Small Business Taskforce)</div>
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- See more at: http://www.lfig.org/event/lfig-at-labour-party-conference-2013-an-enterprising-nation-how-small-firms-freelancers-and-self-employed-can-flourish-under-labour/#sthash.vsu6ywBf.dpuf</div>
Labour Small Business Forumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17887788566020306579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1551808330369746872.post-54459843166735487552013-03-18T05:42:00.004-07:002013-03-18T05:44:44.799-07:00Becoming the party of small business<br />
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Is Labour becoming the party of and for small business? It
certainly seemed like it last Monday when I joined with a few hundred others
who were members of Labour Entrepreneurial and Small Business network at
Brixton Market to celebrate the release of the report from Labour’s independent
task force on small business. What is interesting is the growing momentum
behind such events as they seem to be getting larger and larger and have more
and more of a buzz each time. </div>
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There is a real meeting of minds because Labour
is beginning really to get and understand the small business economy and its 88
page report - for the Policy Review - included over 100 recommendations is
proof of that. But it is not the only evidence, the other interesting thing is
that business realises that Labour understands what it is about because
Labour’s comments about wealth and enterprise are not simply old-rhetoric but
are based on real understanding. For instance Chuka has recently said that he
has banned his team from using the phrase ‘SME’, because he considers it to be
too broad a definition of small firms, encompassing as it does the self
employed right up to the 250 person enterprise. Labour it seems is not
proposing a one size fits all model for business but a truly tailored approach. </div>
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To appreciate why this is you simply need to look at Labour’s business team. It
is headed by Chukka Umunna whose father came to this country and established
his own small firm. From what Chuka says and does it is clear that this isn’t
simply another brief but it is in his blood. Alongside him is Toby Perkins the
MP for Chesterfield. Toby ran his own small business before entering Parliament
so when he goes around talking to small firms around the country he understands
what it is like to raise finance and to employ people and the burden of
regulation. In the Lords they have Parry Mitchell who as a serial entrepreneur
founded three companies all of which grew to be market leaders. Backing them
there seems to be a brilliant team of advisors and as the cold evening in Brixton showed party members and other are
confident to show their colours as small business people for and in the Labour
Party. As for the Task Force report it was originally headed by the brilliant Nigel
Dougherty who spearheaded process forward but suffered a sad and untimely death
last year. It was picked up by Bill Thomas formerly of HP who has expertly brought
together business representatives, academics and entrepreneur and put together
the report.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Another pointer to this great understanding is that the
report wasn’t launched at some fancy offices in Canary Wharf or at some bank,
but in Brixton Market. Labour realises that the beating heart of enterprise in
our country isn’t in board rooms of venture capitalists but with the
self-employed; the white van man, the freelancer; the market firm and the small
enterprise. While many in the Labour Party still cling to the belief that the
next election is going to fought on a platform on health and education the
truth is different. The battle field is going to be growth and prosperity and
is going to be fought around how that can be delivered. Labour is positioning
itself clearly to say that it will be delivered through small business and that
their values are one and same as ours. Previously Labour governments worked
hard to help small business but there was always a feeling that they were at
arms lengths from small business. But from what I saw and heard on Monday and
saw in the report, Labour had moved from nodding terms with small business to a
proper handshake and hopefully onwards to a full embrace. The idea that Labour
should be the party of and for small business, isn’t rhetoric and it has moved
beyond simply aspiration and is on course to become a tangible reality. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>Philip Ross is a
member of LFIG and the founder of the Labour Small Business Forum which wants
to build a network of Labour members in small business and identify those in
every constituency. To get involved contact Philip at rosspe@talk21.com #philiprosslgc<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i>A second article on
the </i><a href="http://www.labouremail.org.uk/files/uploads/18e1c898-008e-7794-05da-8ea652c77494.pdf?utm_source=taomail&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=10722+Ed+Miliband+speech+to+the+British+Chambers+of+Commerce+Annual+Conference+2013&tmtid=45882-10722-2-3272-117924"><i>Task Force Report</i></a><i> will be published later this week</i><o:p></o:p></div>
Labour Small Business Forumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17887788566020306579noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1551808330369746872.post-48821359272470123372012-10-16T05:17:00.002-07:002012-10-16T09:22:54.433-07:00Rights under attackChukka Umunna has written to Labour members asking them to lobby their MPs to vote against the plans to strip away employment rights. This is wha he says :<br />
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<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; padding: 0px;">
<span style="color: black;">Dear </span><a href="http://www.unionstogether.org.uk/page/m/6e20efa2/6e224471/3c3ee1cd/524cdfb6/1640689659/VEsE/" rel="nofollow" style="color: #451e67; outline: 0px;" target="_blank" title="http://www.unionstogether.org.uk/under-attack"><span style="color: black;"><img align="right" alt="Your rights at work are under attack" height="175" src="http://www.unionstogether.org.uk/page/-/Your%20rights%20at%20work/flowRoot2985.png" style="border: 0px solid; margin: 0px;" width="399" /></span></a><span style="color: black;">Friend</span></div>
<div id="yui_3_7_2_1_1350387295636_462" style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; padding: 0px;">
<span id="yui_3_7_2_1_1350387295636_461" style="color: black;">Tomorrow the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats are launching their latest assault on the British worker and we urgently need your help to defeat a bill that could adversely affect the lives of millions of people.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; padding: 0px;">
<span style="color: black;">Vince Cable and the Tory-led government will bring their Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (ERR) Bill back to the House of Commons to try and turn it into Law.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black;">I need your help right now to make sure as many MPs as possible vote against the ERR bill tomorrow.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; padding: 0px;">
<span style="color: blue;"><a href="http://www.unionstogether.org.uk/page/m/6e20efa2/6e224471/3c3ee1cd/524cdfb1/1640689659/VEsF/" rel="nofollow" style="color: #451e67; outline: 0px;" target="_blank" title="http://www.unionstogether.org.uk/page/speakout/your-rights-at-work-under-attack"><strong>Click here to ask your MP to vote against this bill which strips workers of vital employment protections</strong></a></span></div>
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<span style="color: black;">This ERR bill will:</span></div>
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<li><span style="color: black;">Water down the rights of all employees in this country</span></li>
<li><span style="color: black;">The time an employee is required to be employed before they are able to claim for unfair dismissal has already been raised from one year to two, and now these proposals will reduce the amount of compensation unfairly dismissed workers can receive</span></li>
<li><span style="color: black;">Reduce protections for whistleblowers at work.</span></li>
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<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; padding: 0px;">
<span style="color: black;">If the government can get this Bill passed they’ll also allow employers to make minimal offers to workers to leave, then gag those same workers from even mentioning this at employment tribunal.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; padding: 0px;">
<span style="color: black;">Not content with action that will leave thousands in fear for their jobs – the government’s bill will also abolish the Human Rights Commission’s duty to promote a society free of discrimination. It is disgraceful that Ministers should pretend abolishing action to end discrimination should be part of anything called an ‘enterprise’ bill.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black;">The Labour position is very clear – <u>we will be voting against the Bill this week</u>. </span></div>
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<span style="color: black;">We do not want to make it easier for bosses to sack people, we want to make it easier for firms to hire. Nothing less than real action to help the economy will do, and sweeping aside workers rights is only going to make things much, much worse.</span></div>
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<span style="color: black;">We will not stand for it. </span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #454545; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; padding: 0px;">
<span style="color: mediumblue;"><a href="http://www.unionstogether.org.uk/page/m/6e20efa2/6e224471/3c3ee1cd/524cdfb1/1640689659/VEsC/" rel="nofollow" style="color: #451e67; outline: 0px;" target="_blank" title="http://www.unionstogether.org.uk/page/speakout/your-rights-at-work-under-attack"><strong>Please click here to ask your MP to vote against the ERR bill tomorrow</strong></a></span></div>
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Thank you,</div>
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Chuka</div>
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<strong><u>Chuka Umunna MP</u></strong></div>
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<strong>Member of Parliament for Streatham</strong></div>
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<strong>Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Innovation &Skills</strong></div>
Labour Small Business Forumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17887788566020306579noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1551808330369746872.post-83665610787051351172012-10-15T02:25:00.003-07:002012-10-15T02:25:57.073-07:00De-mutualising fairness at work?<br />
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Perhaps if I owned a Bentley and was asked to give it up I wouldn’t find it that hard to do as I have never been in a position to own or use a Bentley, I don’t really know what they are worth. Just as the Tory frontbench think it will be all right for people to give up their employment rights. They have never had real jobs, never needed such rights and have no appreciation of what they are worth.</div>
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But I can’t understand how people would give up their rights to unfair dismissal from their jobs and their family income? Or, to put it another way, how could people give up their rights to be treated fairly? Do such rights have a value? To some they have no value and to some they are just a cost.</div>
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But we in the Labour movement, and I as a member of the Labour Small Business Forum, know they had a cost – one of over a 100 years of campaigning of hardships and struggle. To us they have a priceless value as those who went before us sacrificed to make them possible. They understood the fallacy of relying on just the good character of their employer or manager, of relying on their simple ‘benevolence’ or on their ‘charity’, or on their ‘paternalism’ – was flawed. They sought the dignity of work and fair treatment. Unions could help enforce such fair treatment, but in their absence (and outside the public sector they are largely absent) the guarantor of fair treatment is employment rights enshrined in legislation. They help make companies good places to work. To us they are priceless, but to the Tories they are valueless and costly and don’t fit inside their Downton Abbey-esque view of the world and so they propose to dispose of them.</div>
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George Osborne’s idea whereby employees can trade away their employment rights for a few plastic shares is the sort of scheme that would be rejected out of hand by the FSA as a consumer con-trick. It seems that there is to be a tariff on maternity and paternity leave and childcare. What price equality in the workplace? Ask George. What is the value of family life and the right to take time off unpaid when your children are ill? Ask George. Can Dad’s take time off too? What is the value of speaking out against bullies in the workplace? Ask George. They plan to buy us all off.</div>
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For Osborne has ready a great scheme to de-mutualise the fair society. I know that none of them have had a job outside of politics. They don’t know what it is like to start a new job and find slipped in with your new contract a form asking you to waive the working-time directive. They don’t know what it is like to see their friends lose their jobs because their faces don’t fit on the day before they acquire employment rights. I do. They don’t know what it is like to see a friend return from maternity leave only to see that they have been demoted. I have seen all this in past jobs.</div>
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But I have seen also the ashen faces of managers when they realise that they can’t get away with it, that they are being judged by both moral standards and legal requirements. That they have both moral and legal responsibility to the people they employ. What keeps bad managers in check are employment rights – they are the silent guarantors of fair treatment in the workplace because bad managers are forced to work within those parameters. They mean that we don’t surrender our civil rights when we clock on, that we are going to be treated with dignity and respect at work.</div>
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I know that some abuse their rights but, ironically, most of the cases I know of occur in the public sector and not the private sector. When cases do go to tribunals and the employees win, how can that be a travesty of justice? How can the fact that someone can prove that they have been discriminated against, abused or bullied be wrong?</div>
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I am all for employee ownership of shares and all for helping small firms recruit new staff and to grow small business ownership but there needs to be a fair balance of rights and responsibilities between staff and employers. Stripping away employment rights isn’t the solution.</div>
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Ironically if you own shares in many companies you can’t sell them on the open market and often have to sell them back to the company when you leave. So the company AGMs will be a hoot – since unless the staff vote through what the management want they could get the sack and lose their shares. It is Conservative democracy in action. Only they could come up with such a plan, as only they are so out of touch with the real world.</div>
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By Philip Ross - originally published by Progress </div>
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<a href="http://www.progressonline.org.uk/2012/10/10/defending-rights-at-work/">http://www.progressonline.org.uk/2012/10/10/defending-rights-at-work/</a></div>
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Labour Small Business Forumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17887788566020306579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1551808330369746872.post-32981658822516217382012-10-12T06:26:00.001-07:002012-10-12T06:26:17.312-07:00PradRad meeting to take up small business issuesThe next PradRad meeting on Wednesday 17th October has speakers taking up small business issues :<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #ff2808; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px;"><strong>Proactive Small Business Promotion Agencies In Central and Local Government </strong></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px;">Small and medium sized businesses employ around half the UK work force. We need to end the Thatcher/Reagan consensus about unfettered free markets and instead have </span><span class="mark" id="ecxmisspell-0" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px;">SME</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px;"> advocates in the heart of government charged with encouraging growth in this sector.<br /><strong>Cllr Steve Cowan, Leader of Opposition Hammersmith and Fulham Council<br />@stephencowan</strong></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px;"><strong><span style="color: #ff2808;">Tackling Late Payment to Help Small Firms Survive and Grow</span></strong></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px;">Too many organisations still manage their cashflow by stringing their smaller suppliers along, which makes it harder for small firms to grow and can drive them under. Suppliers have the right to sue for payment but understandably rarely use this, and the voluntary approach to encourage prompt payment has its limitations. Large firms, public bodies and charities – including privatised utilities, local authorities and subsidiaries of overseas companies – should be required by law to publish their independently audited payment practices in their annual reports, enabling the worst offenders to be publicly named and shamed.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px;" /><strong style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px;">Ben Coleman, Self Employed, </strong><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px;"> </span><strong style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px;">Member of Labour’s Small Business Taskforce. (Secretary of Hammersmith CLP).</strong><br />
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<strong style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px;">See : </strong><br />
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<a href="http://pragmaticradicalism.co.uk/top-of-the-policies-on-industrial-policy-chaired-by-iain-wright-mp-17-october-barley-mow-westminster">http://pragmaticradicalism.co.uk/top-of-the-policies-on-industrial-policy-chaired-by-iain-wright-mp-17-october-barley-mow-westminster</a>Labour Small Business Forumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17887788566020306579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1551808330369746872.post-17340170519873963432012-10-12T06:10:00.002-07:002012-10-12T06:10:48.608-07:00Why we must teach girls to codeby vijay riyait.<br />
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In the current debate about the schools exam system, the discussion has been based on the type of examination system that kids leaving school at 16 should undertake. While this is an important issue it fails to focus on the type of knowledge we would like our children to develop and how that learning should be relevant for today’s society and for the economic success of our country.<br />
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In the film, Dead Poet’s Society, there is a great scene in which Robin Williams explains that medicine, law, business, engineering are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life but that poetry, beauty, romance and love are the things we stay alive for. So, I want to be clear before I set out my argument that STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and maths) are not the only important ingredients for a successful country and our children need to have a broad based educational background for as long as possible before specialising.<br />
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Having said that, if we look at the statistics, women only make up 12 per cent of engineering graduates and just 2 per cent of girls take physics A Level. There has been an enduring and growing gender imbalance in STEM which severely limits the growth of this country and hugely distorts the available labour market. Computing has been falling in popularity overall as a subject and at degree level, 91 per cent of computing/engineering students are male. The last Labour government set up the UK Resource Centre for Women to advance gender equality and diversity from the classroom to the boardroom in science, engineering and technology. However, progress has been slow, painfully so. What we need, and the thing which government is bad at doing, is leading a cultural shift about the way we see the role of women and how women view the opportunities available for themselves. In India, you are far more likely to a see a female programmer than in the UK and this is in a large way due to the fact that computing is seen as a valuable part of the overall economic engine. It is a way for women to have careers and get paid well and be respected in Indian society.<br />
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The current government has taken steps to change the way ICT is taught in schools and a move away from just teaching computer packages and towards a curriculum which has had input from companies such as Microsoft, Google and organisations such as the British Computing Society. This is all goods news but we can do more and we can and must do more at grass-roots levels as the ICT changes won’t occur until 2014. There has been a growing movement to take computing for girls into the heart of communities and to inspire them to work on simple programming tasks. I would like Labour to support not only changes to the school curriculum but to support these initiatives at the local level (in our poorest areas) and to put them higher up the political agenda. I would also contend that KS3 is not early enough to catch the imagination of many girls and to challenge stereotypes and this must be done by at least KS2. We need young role models to take the message that computing is for you as a girl and that you can still do all the things that other girls do and not be considered ‘strange’ and ‘weird’.<br />
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A major part of our future economic success in our evolving digital age in the 21st Century will depend upon whether we can involve our young women and not so young women (computing skills are blind to the age of the person) in taking up careers in software development. The best way to see what can be achieved with people willing to make a difference can be seen by the energy and passion of a daughter of a good friend of mine in Canada who is an award winning technology business woman. Her daughter, Genevieve L’Esperance has been teaching girls coding and this video conveys more than my words can ever do.<br />
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(From Progress)<br />
Labour Small Business Forumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17887788566020306579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1551808330369746872.post-84184007801217014172012-10-12T06:09:00.001-07:002012-10-12T06:09:49.651-07:00Party of Small Business!<br />
By vijay riyait.<br />
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As a former secretary of the Federation of Small Businesses in Leicester, the easiest way for me to bring an unnerving quiet to a room of small business owners used to be to say that I was a Labour party member. In my experience, small businesses have had a distrust of all politicians for many years, believing that they favour the corporates of the world. They know that politicians always promise to understand their concerns and their struggles but deep down they are not really convinced that they do. With the decline in trust in the political class in general, this, I believe, is echoed in the small business world. Small business owners, like many ordinary people, wondering whether politicians or even politics has the answer. Labour has to show that politics does matter in small business in supporting and valuing it.<br />
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So, where has this attitude come from about Labour from small business owners? There is the usual that Labour can’t manage the economy effectively. This is normally expressed by them saying ‘if we ran our businesses like Labour ran the economy, we would’ve been bust long ago’. Then there are the regulations, which they see as Labour dramatically increasing in their time in office. But really it’s the fact that they do not believe that Labour shares their values of entrepreneurship, hard work, self-reliance and building wealth.<br />
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If we look at the numbers, there are 4.5 million small businesses. SMEs account for 99 per cent of all businesses, 58.8 per cent of private sector employment and 48.8 per cent of private sector turnover. SMEs employ an estimated 13.8 million people and have an estimated £1,500bn turnover. From these few facts, it’s clear that SMEs are the life blood of our economy. They’re the engine room of growth of the UK and the employer of most of our fellow citizens.<br />
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Labour needs a culture shift to understand small businesses and their owners and what they contribute to the economic success of our nation but also, just as importantly, what they contribute to the wellbeing of local communities. I work with a project called ProHelp run by Leicestershire Cares, which brings together SMEs who give pro bono support to charitable and community organisations. They regularly give tens of thousands of pounds of vital support per year, often being the difference between the community organisation surviving or failing.<br />
While Labour was right to bring in the minimum wage and champion current campaigns like the living wage we also have to work to make the life of small business owners easier, allow them to grow, find new markets and adopt innovative practices. Labour does have a good story to sell on enterprises with our strong links with the cooperative movement and the social enterprise model.<br />
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How do we make this cultural shift? It requires building relationships with small businesses in our community, understanding their issues and campaigning with them to bring about change which helps the businesses to be more successful. In Leicester West CLP we’re working together with Movement for Change to set up a Leicester Business Forum where the local Labour party can engage with business owners, listen to them and act on their concerns. This is vitally important for us in Leicester Labour as the national conference of the Federation of Small Businesses is in Leicester in 2013, so this presents us with a huge opportunity to show Labour can be the party of small business and entrepreneurship. It’s only through true understanding at a grassroots level can Labour hope to build the national policies that will see the SME sector lead us out of this economic depression.<br />
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<a href="http://www.progressonline.org.uk/2012/09/05/the-party-of-small-business/" style="color: #333333; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Published in Progress Online</a></div>
Labour Small Business Forumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17887788566020306579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1551808330369746872.post-15970102513160004442012-10-12T02:15:00.003-07:002012-10-12T02:16:40.194-07:00Fringe Success!<br />
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There were many themes to this years Labour conference, but
a strong one much to surprise was that of small business. Labour ran a business
day on the Monday in which the shadow cabinet met with business people from all
over the country. Then on the Monday there was an open microphone session in
Manchester Central where delegates and representatives could put their
questions to the Labour business team. There were a few good fringe events too,
with the Fabians doing one on the changing nature of work. The Federation of
Small Business also invited Ed Balls a meeting. There had been much talk about
finance, innovation and the changing of the work place. That small business
will be the driver that propels the economy forward was common currency. The recovery will not be led by a few large
firm but by many small ones. The need to empower small business isn’t just
about the economy it is about empowering a generation.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Then on the Tuesday Ed Milliband had used his conference
speech to tell people the small businessman Arthur Henderson whose firm had
been let down by the banks and the financial institutions. Bank are there he
noted to serve business it is not the other way round. This echoes strongly
opinions and discussions already taking place in the City among institutions
themselves about where it all went wrong and what they need to do to fix it. <o:p></o:p></div>
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In the evening it was the turn of the Labour Small Business
Forum. The Forum is a network of Labour members and supporters who work for
themselves or in a small business and we held our fringe meeting and invited
speakers to come and talk with us. Instead of being external organisation
coming to talk to Labour the idea of the forum is for us to talk about small
business ourselves as we are the party of small business. The distinction is
that instead of small business coming to the party to talk to the members to
raise issues, we the network and members
ask them to discuss with us. The distinction between the two positions may
sound small but it is important. The aim of the Labour Small Business Forum is
that Labour if is to become the party for small business, it needs to be the
party OF small business. Which means that we need to organise the thousands of
people in the party working for or in small firms or as self-employed.<o:p></o:p></div>
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We had the best small business line up at conference. After
my introduction in which I stressed the importance of modernising the way we
work and supporting emerging firms and freelance working, John Walker the
national chairman of the Federation of Small Business picked up on my comments
about IR35 and agreed that it was a complicated and unwieldy tax that has not
been resolved and was a bar for going into business. He reiterated the familiar
problems that small businesses have with getting hold of finance from the
banks. Confidence in financial institutions is a problem and he made reference
to the mis-selling of interest rate swaps to many of his members. This chimed
with what Ed had said during his speech. As a policy call he suggested that it
was hard for small firms to initially grow and take on people and suggested
offering an NI holiday to firms that did this. <o:p></o:p></div>
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He was followed by Dr Jo Twist of the UKIE (the trade
association for the UK’s games industry), her points neatly dovetailed with his
as she talked about the phenomena of crowdfunding which was a way that
investors could lend to companies directly using the internet as a platform and
thereby circumnavigating the banks. Which the chair noted that commentators
saying that pouring subsidy into banking may end up destroying this new
innovation’. Jo explained how in the USA they have passed the JOBS Act which
makes it easier for this sort of lending to take place and now places like
Silicon Valley are a light with such funding. She said the FSA need s to make
similar allowances in the UK. She had discussed this recently with Harriet
Harman at a round table session. The
other issue have for their members and the growing number of small micro-firms
that start in the games is the training and skills and they have lobbied
successfully to reintroduce coding into the curriculum at school. So people
will not only know how to use WORD but could write one too. Her policy call was
to offer to collaborate with Labour in delivering an excellent technical
baccalaureate. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Following on the theme of innovation was RichardLittle from
the PPMA. Richard who has a manufacturing background whose success comes in
part from design and development talked about the need for Britain to celebrate
its status as a nation of inventors and innovators, rather than being
embarrassed by it. He suggested also a scheme whereby people could sign over
unwanted patents to the state as an endowment and also for Government to make
it easy to take advantage of new inventions and innovations in places like the
NHS. He said he would know we were successful when we started putting up
statues to inventors again, like the one for Greathead near Bank Station in
London.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Emily Thomas, who had been a special advisor at the Treasury
and the DTi talked about the difficulties in setting employee owned business
and the amount of bureaucracy that is in involved. She noted that only 14-15%
of entrepreneurs are women and we need to do something to level the playing
field so women can go into business. She noted that women are often suited to business
as it can offer flexibility. Discussions noted
that it was also about modernising both tax and public services too so
they work for the 21st century. She noted that Government spends billions of
pounds each year on procurement and needs to do more to ensure that more of
these contracts go to small firms.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In answer to the other panellist Shadow Minister Toby
Perkins MP, who had run his own firm before entering Parliament acknowledged
the concerns raised by the other speakers and was interested in the points
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Vince Cable's plans for a British Investment bank, though he suspected that the
coalition may not complete delivery of it but Labour would finish off when
re-elected. He noted the importance of
skills and the technical baccalaureate and welcomed Jo Twists discussions about
crowdfunding. He noted too the diversity of ownership but the need to encourage
and support more enterpreneurs (as he had been himself).<o:p></o:p></div>
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The meeting rounded off with a number of questions from the
audience whose number now included Chris Leslie MP who came to listen and
seemed also pleased at the enthusiasm and passion that the meeting was showing
for small business and Labour.<o:p></o:p></div>
Labour Small Business Forumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17887788566020306579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1551808330369746872.post-71959706989787746242012-10-08T03:52:00.002-07:002012-10-08T03:52:39.163-07:00Invention and Innovation - Foundations for success<br />
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><i>Our small business fringe meeting was addressed by Richard Little of the PPMA. He talked about the great British success story of innovation and invention and his contribution was widely discussed by members of the forum and those at the the event. Below is an article by Richard covering his main themes.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Ed Milliband has stated that he wants Labour to be the party of the small business and the self employed. A sensible approach because over half of UK turnover is generated by small business and there are nearly 5 million such businesses. Policies which help just half of such companies employ just one more person would have a dramatic impact on UK finances and prospects.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">There are many ongoing discussions about making finance easier for small firms and initiatives and grants for market research, training, coaching and attending exhibitions etc. All of these are welcome and all make a difference. Innovation and entrepreneurship are, quite rightly, for everyone and not just the Conservatives!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">However, I contend that some small innovative businesses suffer because of a change in national attitudes over the last few years that needs attention and I would welcome initiatives and policies from the Labour Party to put things right. The great advantage of such policies would be that they need not be too expensive but could make a big difference.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">I refer to Invention. When the word Inventor is used, it is a sad fact that in the UK, people's minds leap to a mental picture of Caractacus Potts in his workshop rather than consider the people behind the inventions behind so many of the things we use today and take for granted.<br /><br />Where would we be without Alexander Graham Bell's telephone or Marconi's wireless or Daimler's car? Apple has 3000 patents, and Audi advertises the fact that it has filed 9,621 patents - rather more than NASA at 6,509 Each of these patents names employees including scientists and engineers as Inventors. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">An Inventor is a respectable and important thing to be - and anyone can be one. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Inventors produce inventions and inventions can be protected. Monopoly rights generated via patents around successful new products for which there is a demand can allow prices that permit UK wage levels and thus manufacturing here in the UK as well as possibilities for exports.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Small businesses based around inventors can actually do rather well - Dunlop, Hornby, Thorneycroft, Pilkington, Dyson and many others have employed many thousands of people here in the UK over the years. The inventions of Whittle, Cockerell, Mitchell, Sopwith, Marconi, Faraday and Watson Watt have either saved our bacon or been the USP of what became huge industrial companies - or both. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Britain used to be associated with invention and innovation. Now Japan files 15x as many patents as we do, USA is 12x (we used to be on a par) and even France files 3x as many as we do.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">If you ask people on the street to name actors, footballers or even chefs you might get quite a selection but living inventors - probably Dyson, possibly Sinclair but that's probably it. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">There are many things that the Labour Party in government will have to do but I beg that some time is put aside for the rehabilitation of inventors. If my staff get married I can give £1000 tax free as a gift. How about I can give a tax free reward to someone who's named on a patent when it gets granted? How about patent office fees are reduced if inventors are willing to share their invention with </span><span style="color: #c00000; font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">UK</span><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"> businesses in return for a guaranteed royalty? How about some garden party invitations to successful patentees? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Currently patents (and other forms of IPR) are considered individual or company assets and individuals and companies have the whole responsibility and cost associated with filing and maintaining patents. I am not suggesting that the state should directly pay towards this but I do think that the state should consider the fact that a good quality granted patent owned by a UK company is actually potentially a national asset too...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">I suggest that Government business departments need to develop a realistic way to reassess patents as potential national assets rather than just individual ones. They may need to be ready to step in in the national interest to help protect ideas that can be exploited here in the UK where inventors or businesses can't afford wide coverage.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Perhaps the patent office can be charged with helping get patent filings right first time - so many lapse because small companies with their first innovation take advantage of 'free filing' and word the patent so badly it either can't be easily granted or easily enforced. The state should help select worthy concepts and help protect them for exploitation in the UK - perhaps by funding foreign applications by means of grant or in return for royalties.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje4z_dkqw427xIO113f99YAmC9FQQ7vTxzoh2Gy23VBwzEvHQGOtSOIskyQyhaBNxDWFnK_6ah-BVp2dDGd-sU6YWCw4eKdWK9Wt4go_KVtGS443oOuUMNAupVFllXQ7-E1uUKUfR-AlOF/s1600/JHG.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje4z_dkqw427xIO113f99YAmC9FQQ7vTxzoh2Gy23VBwzEvHQGOtSOIskyQyhaBNxDWFnK_6ah-BVp2dDGd-sU6YWCw4eKdWK9Wt4go_KVtGS443oOuUMNAupVFllXQ7-E1uUKUfR-AlOF/s320/JHG.jpg" width="238" /></a><span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">On a larger scale, how about that as and when the state gives a grant for R&D the government departments at least pay some attention to what is subsequently developed, perhaps via some form of technical assessment body, reporting to health, transport, utilities and defense. This would probably produce much better returns for grants given than the current situation of closed doors to any small business with a new idea. I know - try getting air disinfection systems even considered by the NHS!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">British invention deserves to be in the business section of the paper, not just the light entertainment section.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br />Now and in the future, the success of British Manufacturing will depend on being smarter, more efficient, more creative and exploiting British ideas here rather than abroad. Outside the Royal Exchange in London last week I stood next to the wonderful statue of J.H Greathead who invented the cutting machines that enabled the building of tube tunnels. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">When we start putting up statues to engineers and inventors again I predict that we'll be on the road to recovery.</span></div>
Labour Small Business Forumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17887788566020306579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1551808330369746872.post-49404656420973700852012-10-05T11:54:00.001-07:002012-10-05T11:54:35.830-07:00Ukie CEO offers to work with Labour on new ‘TechBacc’ to create a new generation of digital creative entrepreneurs<br />
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<em> October 2012 -</em> <em>London, United Kingdom –</em> </div>
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CEO of games and interactive entertainment trade body Ukie, has today used a speech at the ‘How Labour can put small business first’ event, held at the party’s Conference, to comment on the announcement by Ed Milliband that Labour would introduce a new Technical Baccalaureate qualification.</div>
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Commenting on the 'TechBacc' announcement, Dr Twist said: "We need more young people knowing how to code, how to be creative with code, and how to be the next generation of digital entrepreneurs, so I welcome any announcement that looks at how we can improve how people learn relevant skills that allow them to work with and create technology. I would welcome the opportunity to work with the Labour party so that the Technical Baccalaureate can be rigorous and relevant to create this new generation."</div>
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Dr Twist further emphasised the importance of skills to the UK’s games and interactive entertainment industry, particularly of getting children learning computer science and art:</div>
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Dr Twist said that work should continue with this government to deliver the skills required by the games industry: “Through our Next Gen Skills campaign, we have successfully called for computer science to be introduced on to the national curriculum and as of this month it is there. But the job is not yet done and we now need enough teachers to teach it, in an engaging and exciting way.</div>
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But we also need artists, as it is in the mix of technology and art that much innovation comes from. Our education system needs to recognise this and encourage cross over and collaboration between different educational disciplines.”</div>
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Dr Twist also used the ‘How Labour can put small business first’ event to call for more to be done to improve access to finance for the UK’s games businesses, citing crowdfunding as a viable and sustainable source of non-bank lending.</div>
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Dr Twist said: “As an innovative industry, the games industry is always embracing innovative funding models. And we’re seeing more and more games companies successfully use crowdfunding to bring money to their businesses.”</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Labour SmallBusiness Forum panel, Jo Twist, Richard Little Philip Ross (chair), Toby Perkins MP, John Walker (FSB) and Emily Thomas</td></tr>
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“We’re also seeing a number of UK crowdfunding platforms emerge. We believe that crowdfunding can fill a real gap that exists for games businesses that cannot get support from banks or VCs. However, the current regulatory system is, understandably, not designed with crowdfunding in mind and creates barriers for crowdfunding platforms to be established and to operate as effectively as possible.</div>
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“Recognition from the FSA of the existence and potential of crowdfunding as a separate, unique form of financing, followed by the creation of regulations covering crowdfunding as a distinct model or platform, will be crucial in accelerating the growth of this industry and its offering to the wider UK economy.”</div>
Labour Small Business Forumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17887788566020306579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1551808330369746872.post-7834241157400961202012-10-05T02:45:00.000-07:002012-10-05T04:32:55.784-07:00Small Business Fringe Great Success!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
With an attendance of about 50 people, our fringe was a great success, a more detailed report to follow.</div>
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<br />Labour Small Business Forumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17887788566020306579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1551808330369746872.post-39503907017036173052012-09-13T06:50:00.003-07:002012-09-19T02:56:00.149-07:00Small Business Forum at Labour Conference<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>LABOUR CONFERENCE FRINGE EVENT</b></div>
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<span style="color: red;">HOW LABOUR CAN PUT SMALL BUSINESS FIRST</span></div>
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TUESDAY 2ND OCTOBER 1800 - 1900</div>
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MANCHESTER CENTRAL</div>
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EXCHANGE ROOM 10 - FREE</div>
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<b>All are welcome to attend our fringe event at the Labour conference. We have the best small business thinkers and speakers at the whole conference who will be discussing how Labour can put small business first covering issues such as finance, innovation, tax and development. </b> </div>
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The meeting will be chaired by <b>Philip Ross </b>who will ask each panelist to speak for 5 minutes followed by discussions and questions from the floor.</div>
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We have the Shadow Minister for Small Business -<b> Toby Perkins </b>- who before entering Parliament ran his own small firm.</div>
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<b>John Walker</b> - Chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses - who will explain the issue facing their members.</div>
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<b>Dr Jo Twist</b> CEO of the UKIE the trade association in part for the UK's Video Games industry, she will talk about the creative opportunities ahead and the need for skills and innovative funding such as crowdfinancing</div>
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<b>Richard Little</b> from the PPMA will talk about innovation and invention and patents and how Britain needs to harness, protect and celebrate its creativity.</div>
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<b>Emily Thomas</b> from Aequitas Consulting and former Treasury and DTI Special Advisor.</div>
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<i>No booking required, but indications of attendance most welcome.<br />Further information please contact Philip Ross 07881 685 952<br />rosspe@talk21.com</i></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Our Panellists and Chairman </span></b></div>
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<span style="color: #533c9a; font-family: Georgia;"><span style="line-height: 20px; text-transform: uppercase;">toby perkins mp for chesterfield</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #533c9a; font-family: Georgia;"><span style="line-height: 20px; text-transform: uppercase;">shadow small business minister</span></span></div>
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Toby Perkins is Labour’s Member of Parliament for Chesterfield and the Shadow Small Business Minister.</div>
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Prior to entering Parliament Toby ran his own small business -the Rugby clothing company Club Rugby - from 2004 until his election in 2010. As Shadow Minister he has been visiting and discussing small business policy with small firms, freelancers and the self-employed.</div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #533c9a; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px; text-align: start; text-transform: uppercase;">Dr Jo Twist CEO<br />THE ASSOCIATION FOR UK INTERACTIVE ENTERTAINMENT (UKIE)</span></div>
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Jo Twist is the CEO for the UKIE, the association for UK Interactive Entertainment which includes the UK's thriving video gaming industry. The UKIE's members come from the development, platform holders and publishing communities, educational institutions and the service companies that are vital to the on-going success of the UK industry. Previous positions include Multiplatform Commissioner for BBC Entertainment and Switch, plus BBC Three’s Multiplatform Channel Editor.</div>
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http://ukie.info/content/ukie-announces-appointment-dr-jo-twist-new-ceo</div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #533c9a; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15.555556297302246px; line-height: 20px; text-align: start; text-transform: uppercase;">chairman of the federation of small businesses</span></div>
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John Walker is the National Chairman of the Federation of small Businesses.<br />
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John's career from leaving school was with a high street bank and then in 1987 he became self employed, firstly in retailing, followed by financial services and currently in property.<br />
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He first became involved with the FSB Policy Unit in 1997 and was elected National Policy Chairman in September 2001, retiring from this post in May 2010. John was elected National Chairman in March 2010. He is also involved in his local Region in Surrey.<br />
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On the international front, John was a founding board member of the European Small Business Alliance in 1998, a post he still holds.<br />
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<span style="color: #533c9a; font-family: Georgia;"><span style="line-height: 20px; text-transform: uppercase;">ceo jenton group </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.44444465637207px; line-height: 15.981481552124023px;">The PPMA is the UK's trade association for suppliers of processing and packaging machinery to the UK market and represents over 400 member and associate companies.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14.44444465637207px; line-height: 15.981481552124023px;">Richard became a director in 2007 and is a long standing director of Jenton International. A manufacturer and distributor of equipment to the packaging, printing and converting industry. He will talk about innovation and patents.</span></div>
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<img alt="Emily Thomas" src="http://m3.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/shrink_150_150/p/2/000/05b/2ab/3dfc756.jpg" />
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<span style="color: #533c9a; font-family: Georgia;"><span style="line-height: 20px; text-transform: uppercase;">aequitas consulting ltd</span></span></div>
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Founding director of innovative firm focussed on building social, economic and democratic capacity in the UK and abroad. Activities include public policy, service redesign, social marketing and campaigns. Previously a special advisor at the both the DTI and the Treasury and before that Head of Media and Campaigns at the GMB.</div>
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<span style="color: #533c9a; font-family: Georgia;"><span style="line-height: 20px; text-transform: uppercase;">chairman. Founder of the labour small business forum</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Philip Ross is the founder of the Labour Small Business forum which aims to be a network of Labour members and supporters who work for themselves or in a small business.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">He is a Chartered Engineer and worked a freelancer in financial sector in London. Prior to that he had been a developer at Sage Group developing their payroll and accounting packages.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">In 1999 he was one of the founding members of the Professional Contractors Group that campaigned for reform of IR35 and represented freelancers to the Government. He successfully led the campaign against fast track visas that was destroying British jobs. He is the author of 'Freedom to Freelance' which is the story of both of those campaigns.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">He write a regular column for Progress on small business issues.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">He currently works for and has shares in Alpheus Ltd in London a small financial consultancy, though he speaks here in a personal capacity.</span></div>
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18:00 - 19:00 on Tuesday 2nd October 2012.<br />
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<br />Labour Small Business Forumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17887788566020306579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1551808330369746872.post-65249830604249790042012-08-03T03:48:00.001-07:002012-08-03T03:48:04.579-07:00Is the City changing?<br />
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There is a lot of thinking going on in the City of London. If you were to walk around the Square Mile and attend meetings at the various market groups, thinktanks and at Gresham College, you would be pleasantly surprised at what is being discussed. As well as ritualised complaints about victimisation on bonuses and regulation a new theme is starting to emerge, for a long time fledgling but one that is now starting to fly above the other topics – it is the issue of ethics and values. Last year Charles Moore <a href="http://letchwortheye.blogspot.com/2011/07/was-left-right-after-all.html" style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; color: red; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">questioned capitalism</a> and now some of the bankers themselves are viewing it in a new light. Whatever next?</div>
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In March, Stephen Green, former chair of HSBC and now minister for trade and investment gave a <a href="http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/values-and-value-in-the-marketplace" style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; color: red; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Gresham Colleglecture</a> entitled ‘Values and Value’ and suggested that capitalism was still ‘on trial’. In its defence he suggested that profitability and social responsibility weren’t mutually exclusive and neither were shareholder value and ethical values in conflict. He commented on the truism that there is a new generation emerging from university that believes that it is right to question the corporate ethics of the organisation they may work for.</div>
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A week earlier Merrill Lynch hosted the spring conference for the City’s <a href="http://www.longfinance.net/" style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; color: red; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Long Finance</a> thinktank which discussed ‘into the folly of value – reforming sustainable finance’. The keynote speaker, economist and former Bank of England committee member Professor Charles Goodhart, spoke of the pro-cyclical nature of regulation. He noted that after the <a href="http://www.investopedia.com/features/crashes/crashes3.asp#axzz1othpPi3U" style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; color: red; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">South Sea Bubble crisis</a> in 1711 it was decided that such a crash should never be allowed to happen again so they regulated and outlawed limited liability companies (which remained broadly banned until 1844).</div>
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Goodhart noted that consensus about the current crisis was centring on it being a failure of regulation and supervision and the reaction was for more regulation. But he argued that regulation is not so important because at present the market has no appetite for risk or lending. He noted a tendency both to regulate and deregulate at the wrong times: after the 1929 crash, the response in the US was the introduction of the Glass-Steagall Act which separated out retail banking from investment banking. By 1999 it was decided that the act had been inhibiting growth so it was dismantled.</div>
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For the future, Goodhart suggested a gradual implementation of regulation as the market grows combined with changes in governance to transfer it from managers and shareholders to stakeholders. He suggested that we should rely on governance for the future as regulation is, as demonstrated, pro-cyclical particularly for the larger banks. To me it follows that the larger a bank becomes the more socially responsible and accountable it needs to become to the community at large because, as the last crisis showed, it was the community that ultimately stood surety for them.</div>
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Since then we have had the Libor crisis and, if ever there was a crisis about ethics and values, then this must be it. The irony is that Barclays was founded as a Quaker bank but Bob Diamond when asked by Treasury select committee member John Mann did not know what the founding ethical principles of the bank were (honesty, integrity and plain dealing). At the recent Tomorrow’s Finance conference David Pitt-Watson in part called for a return to the principles of Alfred Marshall – one of the founders of economics – which was that success came through ‘honesty and uprightness’. Ethics and values are not a new or quaint idea, or a product of wishful thinking, but were what our financial system was original built from. The City is starting to recall that.</div>
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But it is hard to say how long this reflective mood will last. The jury is still out, as the debate about what it is that the finance does, how it does it and why it does it continues. The lead argument is that shareholder value and social ethics and values, and profit and corporate social responsibility, can be married together in a combination of both regulations and ethics. Perhaps good regulation and accountable corporate governance can be the glue that marries these partners together and the offspring will be a more prosperous and fairer society, and a financial system that works for the benefit of us all.</div>
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<strong style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Philip Ross</strong></div>Labour Small Business Forumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17887788566020306579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1551808330369746872.post-70884762709422997202012-08-03T03:43:00.001-07:002012-08-03T03:44:25.779-07:00Speaking for small business<a href="http://www.progressonline.org.uk/2012/08/03/speaking-for-small-business/#.UBurKj_-k0k.blogger">Speaking for small business</a> - From Progressonline<br />
by Parry Mitchell<br />
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Baroness Jan Royall, the leader of the opposition in the House of Lords, emailed me recently asking whether I could come and join her for a five minute chat. When the leader summons you, you are prepared for the worst, but I was very pleasantly surprised. Jan asked me whether I’d like to take on a front bench position shadowing the government’s BIS department.</div>
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I asked whether I could consider it over the weekend , but in truth my mind was made up in two nanoseconds.</div>
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For nearly 40 years I had been in the information technology industry, most of it as a serial entrepreneur. I had created, developed and eventually sold three international IT service companies. I know what it’s like to build a company from a couple of people sitting round a table to eventually becoming a global player. My expertise comes from the coal face (well not quite the coal face!).</div>
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I was ennobled in 2000. If you are an ex-MP or have been involved in any form of politics beforehand fitting into the House of Lords is seamless, but if you come from a non-political background it’s tough. I’ve been there over 12 years and now I really know the place well, though I must admit I struggle remembering the names of Cameron’s recent intake.</div>
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So why did I take this job as shadow business minister? Not for the salary – there isn’t any. And not for the power – in opposition you are impotent. And certainly not for ambition – I am way too old for that. I took it because I really do have something to say on a subject I know very well.</div>
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My brief is SMEs and my boss is Chuck Umanna – he is less than half my age, but he is terrific and knows his subject. I am looking forward to working with him and the shadow BIS team.</div>
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You have only to look at the statistics to see that unemployment in the UK comes from job reductions in the large company sector and from the public sector, whereas small and medium companies are more than holding their own. You only have to look at exports to also see that SMEs are doing well and its the large company sector that is struggling. In a depressed economy it is the SMEs who are nimble and stepping up to the challenge. But we should be doing more to encourage them.</div>
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I refuse to accept that Labour should be anything other than the party of business – we mustn’t let the Tories claim business as their sole preserve. It is SMEs that will lead the recovery and it is SMEs which will provide new employment – my brief will be to contribute to the front bench BIS team’s thinking and policy making as well as to hold the government to account.</div>
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Just a word about the banks. I speak to many SMEs and despite quantitative easing and despite all the programmes this coalition government have announced, precious little finance is getting through from the banks to the SMEs. There are many companies out there who have battled through this recession, cut costs, restructured their business models and are now well on the way to recovery. They have done everything right in an economic crisis they did not create, but the banks still treat them like lepers.</div>
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The banks failed. The nation bailed them out. It’s their job to perform and we should be holding their feet to the fire.</div>
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Parry Mitchell is a entrepreneur, member of the House of Lords and the newest addition to the shadow BIS team</div>
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—————————————————————————————</div>Labour Small Business Forumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17887788566020306579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1551808330369746872.post-82882632403601297852012-07-19T03:10:00.001-07:002012-07-19T03:10:31.917-07:00Labour is regaining the trust of British business.<br />
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Labour is regaining the trust of British business.</div>
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Under Ed Miliband’s leadership Labour have already made huge strides on the journey from the foothills of our dismal 2010 election failure to the lofty peak of returning to power.</div>
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On Tuesday another significant step felt like it was taken as Ed Miliband, Ed Balls and Chuka Umunna addressed around 500 businesspeople at Labour’s Annual Business Reception at the Chartered Accountants’ Hall in the City.</div>
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One of the greatest signs of the challenge that faced the leadership team was the extent to which we lost the business vote in 2010. Virtually no significant business figure came out in support of a Labour government at the last election and, even more significantly, a chasm opened between the voting intentions of public and private sector workers with those not working under the umbrella of the state much less likely to vote for us.</div>
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While Tuesday was by no means the resealing of the deal between Labour and the country’s wealth creators, it was perhaps the ‘end of the beginning’ of that process.</div>
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Meeting businesspeople from across the country, from Norwich to Manchester and from Sussex to Yorkshire I was struck again by the extent to which they are keen to give Labour a hearing now in a way that they wouldn’t have nine months ago.</div>
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Chuka Umunna laid out the challenges that faced Labour. The party was listening and learning, but more businesses every day were telling him they didn’t want government to get out of the way, they wanted it to get behind them and support them in the way their international competitors could expect. He recognised that recovery would only come from a vibrant business sector working in harmony with government.</div>
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Subsequently Ed Balls was on top form highlighting the areas of agreement that exist between Labour and the government on the need for a credible deficit reduction strategy, but stipulating that the disagreement was about how it was achieved. They have created a flatlining economy with cuts that have been too far and too fast, choking off the growth needed. The public and private sector should be in partnership because both will play a part in getting Britain back on its feet. We will reduce the deficit but through a stable programme of business growth not an overreliance on public spending cuts.</div>
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Ed Miliband spoke of his recent encounter with Heather Small of M People who had said she was supporting Labour because she had seen the fear in the eyes of her 20-year-old niece, and recognised how many other young people saw their hopes abandoned by the Tory government. He made the case for why tackling the obscene practices that have existed in the banking sector was a resolutely pro business thing to do.</div>
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He stressed how his government would look to support business and why recent policy studies around the British Investment Bank and the review of long-termism demonstrated how Labour wanted to be on the side of the vast majority of businesspeople who contributed towards the success of the nation, while delivering on the bottom line.</div>
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He also introduced the special section of the Future Candidates programme which was designed to encourage more businesspeople to represent the Labour party in parliament and on councils across the country.</div>
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The feedback from attendees was overwhelmingly positive. Despite the fact that many of them would not consider themselves natural Labour supporters, hundreds waited behind to meet the two Eds and Chuka and to push their particular ideas or concerns about how the British business environment was shaping up.</div>
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The final word went to a Shropshire-based accountant who told me: ‘I haven’t voted Labour in quite a while, but seeing those three up there, I have to say they looked like they were serious, I really think they’re going to win.’</div>
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<strong style="background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border: 0px; font-size: 13px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Toby Perkins MP</strong> is a member of the shadow business team and MP for Chesterfield</div>
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Originally published by <a href="http://www.progressonline.org.uk/2012/07/19/the-end-of-the-beginning-2/">Progress</a></div>
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<br /></div>Labour Small Business Forumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17887788566020306579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1551808330369746872.post-49098409603189296952012-07-19T03:08:00.001-07:002012-07-19T03:08:39.329-07:00What is the City for?<br />
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What is the City for? It is not just a question that I am posing but is a question that the City of London is asking itself at the meetings of various financial think tanks and conferences. It is just as well because the rest of the country - families, small businesses and individuals are all asking it.</div>
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Long Finance rhetorically asks ‘when will we know that our financial system is working?’. Of course we can take today’s position as the false positive, meanwhile the financial industry itself offers technical reasons and procedural solutions to each of its failings and suggest that all these faults can be considered separately and discretely. They consider there to be just a few rotten apples, whereas others suggest that it is now the whole barrel that is rotten.</div>
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Does it matter now how many apples are rotten? Whether it is some or all, or whether the system can be technically fixed by a few modifications and a bit of extra regulation? Because at the heart of it is an issue of confidence in the entire financial system and of those who run it. For example, how can we persuade people to put money aside for their retirement in such a financial system? Once people pooled their funds and resources to create mutual organisations, they would save together and lend to each other through their own trusted institutions, whether as building societies or mutual insurance companies. The loss of the Mutuals and their disconnection from their grassroots is significant, while their financial resources and reserves may have been squandered, what it seems was also lost was the principles and ethics that underlined them. The fact is that they existed to collectively serve their members (the savers, borrowers and policy holders) and not to exploit them or their communities. Other institutions though not mutual were also founded on similar ethics, for instance Barclays was founded as a Quaker bank. It was very telling that Bob Diamond didn’t know what the Quaker principles were when asked at the Select Committee.</div>
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Now the image - and perhaps the reality - is that the banking system exists to enrich those that run it (the bankers, fund managers and the like), not those that it serves and the only control we have it is not through ethics, accountability or principles but just regulation. Therein is the root of our financial crisis. (Further regulation is not the answer as it favours the large not the small).</div>
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Instead of endowing members with the profits from its schemes, the image is that the only endowments done are into bonuses. While it is true that we need to reward people for their effort, why is it that banking and the senior public sector are the only areas where profitability and performance don’t seem to matter?</div>
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The banking crisis suggests incompetence; the Libor crisis corruption and rate fixing scam on small business (interest rate swaps) suggests exploitation.</div>
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On this evidence the banking system doesn’t seem to be there for us or small business. Why should hard working families entrust their hard earned monies to such institutions? We can all see the advantages of prudent saving for old age and the need for insurance and can work through our dislike of the system to make such savings, but not everyone will. This dislike of the system and belief that they are being ripped off is a strong motivator. There is a need to persuade people that institutions can be trusted to look after their money; that they won’t just use it to enrich themselves, but will use it for instance to grow sustainable pensions for them and in that process they won’t be exploiting the struggling small businesses in our communities. Some say it is not in the banks interests to exploit small firms and the market understands the need to act in a sustainable way. In the book ‘The Price of Fish’ they compare the financial system to fishing and point out that it wasn’t in the fisherman’s interest to overfish and ruin the seas, but they did it time and time again.</div>
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How close are we to ruin? The fisherman never knew, do we? Do we need a new ethical and principle based revolution? To me that means more mutualisation perhaps at a lower level; failing that at the very least we should go back and implement those original Quaker and Barclay principles that seem to have been forgotten of ‘honesty, integrity and plain dealing’.</div>
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Philip Ross</div>
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Also published by <a href="http://www.longfinance.net/long-finance-blogs/the-pamphleteers/609-what-is-the-city-for.html">Long Finance</a></div>
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<br /></div>Labour Small Business Forumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17887788566020306579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1551808330369746872.post-34478060353985938882011-11-28T12:13:00.000-08:002011-11-28T12:13:05.828-08:00Small business and VAT<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">24<sup>th</sup> January 2011 – Progress<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 114%;">Philip Ross takes a look at what the government's 'all in it together' claim means for small business in the light of the VAT rise, arguing that small businesses trading with the public will be inordinately hit.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shapetype
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o:title=""/> <w:wrap type="square"/> </v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><img align="left" height="78" hspace="12" src="file:///C:/Users/PHILIP~1/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image002.jpg" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_5" width="125" /><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 114%;">Of the many things we have been told by the coalition (Tory-led) government the statements I find hardest to believe are that ‘we are all in this together’ and that the ‘least damaging way to handle the deficit’ is to raise VAT. Firstly when they say ‘all’ I think they mean mainly us, not them, and secondly when they say that raising VAT will be the least damaging way – least damaging for who? It certainly won’t benefit families – that has been shown already – but it will also hurt and damage small businesses too, affect their long term competitiveness and in doing so damage the economic revival.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 114%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 114%;">The Chartered Institute of Directors estimate that raising VAT to 20 per cent will result in the loss of a further 250,000 private sector jobs. Also, the Charity Tax Group has estimated that this increase will cost the sector an additional £140 million. The impact of this may harm the capacity and resources needed to address the government’s big society agenda. It does sound like the ‘wrong tax, at the wrong time’.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 114%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 114%;">Introduced in the 1970s, VAT replaced various sales taxes that had existed until then. It started with a lower band of eight per cent and a higher band of 12.5 per cent, Geoffrey Howe’s first budget abolished the upper rate and raised the rate to 15 per cent to pay for income tax reductions and attempts at budget deficit reductions. They then extended it in 1984 to include hot takeaway food and building improvements, then in 1991 raised it to 17.5 per cent to pay for John Major’s cuts in the poll tax. Then in 1994 it was extended to heating fuel which was charged at eight per cent. Labour’s record on VAT is that it reduced the heating tax from eight per cent to five per cent and, last year, introduced a temporary reduction of the rate down to 15 per cent. Now it is up to an all-time high of 20 per cent. It is the tax of choice for the Tories, taxing people not wealth or income. Just like their other cuts and rises we have the same Tories doing the same, as they have always done; all that has changed is the camouflage for its reason.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 114%;">VAT is a ‘consumption tax’ because it is borne ultimately by the final consumer. It is not a charge on businesses. Businesses can reclaim any VAT that they are charged. So for business-to-business firms it is not such an issue. But for lots of small business that set up to trade with the public whether providing services or goods, then their prices have just gone up. How can small businesses remain competitive in such an environment?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 114%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 114%;">One way is to look the income threshold you must pass after which you must register as a VAT company – before that you can trade without it. The registration limit is £70,000 having gradually risen from £49,000 in 1997. The Federation of Small Businesses is lobbying government to raise this threshold again to take more firms out of VAT, to give them a chance to grow and prosper and spend less time doing stressful paper work. In recognition too that unlike larger businesses they will find it harder to absorb the VAT rise in their prices.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 114%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 114%;">The coalition has laudably set up the Office of Tax Simplification, which, in principle, is a good idea. But that is not just their agenda it is a Labour agenda too. Taking just the example of VAT Labour simplified the Cash Accounting Scheme to let small firms defer paying their VAT until they has received payment from their customers) and more than doubled the threshold for CAS from £660,000 to £1.35 million helping an extra 56,500 business at the time. Labour also introduced the Flat Rate Scheme, which allows businesses to apply a flat rate percentage to their annual turnover – particularly helpful for some smaller retailers.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 114%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 114%;">The Tory-led government has introduced a plethora of small business ‘initiatives’ and we should take each on their merits and I hope to write on these in turn, but, at the end of the day, price of goods and services is what helps make firms competitive, especially small firms. On this the government has got it wrong.<o:p></o:p></span></div>Labour Small Business Forumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17887788566020306579noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1551808330369746872.post-7391510947437871642011-11-28T12:11:00.000-08:002011-11-28T12:11:16.790-08:00Labour and Small Business - Allies in waiting<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif";">20<sup>TH</sup> September 2010 – Progress Magazine.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 114%;">How did Labour miss the nearly five million small businesses in the UK? The party must really recognise the existence of these millions of employees and how they live and work in 2010. Small business strengthens communities and individuals.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><!--[if gte vml 1]><v:shapetype
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o:title="Labour%20rose_2"/> <w:wrap type="square"/> </v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><img align="left" alt="Description: Description: http://www.progressonline.org.uk/images/Labour%20rose_2.jpg" height="69" hspace="12" src="file:///C:/Users/PHILIP~1/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image001.jpg" v:shapes="Picture_x0020_1" width="102" /><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 114%;">Recently I read the interview Ed Milliband gave to the Guardian in which he said he wanted Labour to be the party of small business and the self-employed. An admirable aim, one which we put forward some years ago when we started the Labour Small Business Forum, which is a network of Labour party members and supporters who worked or had worked for themselves. We saw that there is a key Labour principle involved from the old Clause IV, which was ‘to secure for [people] by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry’. Being your own boss in a fair society is a good way of trying to achieve this. It is about empowering people, it is about aspiration and it is about building prosperity. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 114%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 114%;">When out canvassing in 1992, Tony Blair was told by a man cleaning his Sierra that he had always voted Labour in the past, but now he had started his own business he was going to vote Conservative. Blair said afterwards that that was the point at which he realised the election was lost. If Labour wasn’t reaching out to such people then they were doomed to fail. That was nearly 20 years ago. Today more and more people work for themselves as self-employed or freelance or run or have run small business. Has Labour really learned that lesson? <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 114%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 114%;">The traditional view was that the Conservatives were the party of capital and Labour the party of the workers. In the early 1990s at one of the first Labour party meetings I ever attended the selection process was under way to choose a councillor for a safe Labour seat. One of the candidates stood up and spoke and explained that while he was a postman, he also ran the local fish and chip shop. He said, ‘people say to me: How can you be in the Labour party and also run your own business?’ To a lot of tutting, he said, ‘well I say that my children have got to eat’. It didn’t go down very well and he got zero votes. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 114%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 114%;">I hope things have changed since in the Labour party, but one of the inherent problems with new Labour was that the public perception was that it was pro-business, and as far as many grassroots members were concerned, too pro-business. Though that perception wasn’t true among the small business committee even in the Labour party, despite its best efforts the perception was that it was pro big-business not small business. <br />
<b><br />
Change<br />
</b><br />
Hopefully Ed and the other candidates along with many MPs have realised that small business is a key constituent in our community. But this constituency is changing. It includes not just the traditional array of tradesman, small firms making and selling items in our high street and in the industrial estates, but also an army of professional freelance workers working in the knowledge-based economy in areas such as IT, engineering and the creative industries including the media. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 114%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 114%;">According to the Federation of Small Business there are 4.8 million small businesses in the UK (up from four million in 2003), of these three million businesses are sole proprietors and 1.3 million are companies and 462,000 are partnerships. Overall 97 per cent of firms employ fewer than 20 people 95 per cent employ fewer than five people. Over 500,000 people start up their own business every year and small firms contribute more than 50.1 per cent of the UK turnover. How did we miss this? <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 114%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 114%;">Maybe Ed thinks that the small business people and self-employed are a lost constituency and seeks to win them back, and hopefully the other candidates do too. But to do so will require them not just talking and saying nice things about small business but to embrace it and understand it and make a cultural and mind shift in considering it. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 114%;">Firstly, helping small business isn’t just about providing extra help so that they can pay their taxes on time. It is about recognising that not every small business aspires to grow and develop. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 114%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 114%;">The lady running my corner shop doesn’t aspire to become the next Tesco’s. They are happy with just being a small business and earning a living for themselves and their family. Government support shouldn’t be there just to help them grow bigger but there to help them survive and sustain themselves. Ask any small businessman what changes they would like the government to make and they would say bring in legislation to force firms (usually larger firms) to pay their debts on time. The worst offenders, sadly, are often councils, government departments and the police. (As the Forum for Private Business recently discovered). <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 114%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 114%;">Secondly, they need to understand that small businesses often carry huge burdens. For instance maternity benefits. It was suggested in the past that government set up a fund to equalise the cost of between small and large firms. This idea – which came from Labour members who ran their own businesses – is exactly the outside of the box thinking that is needed. Indeed Labour has never quite understood that small business was within its own ranks, I think it always thought of it as something external to itself. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 114%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 114%;">Thirdly, they need to understand the difference between freelance workers and temporary workers. The knowledge-based economy in IT and the creative industries are driven by armies of freelance workers. These workers are often engaged on short-term contracts for work on projects and to bring in expertise. If this is the employment and work pattern for the 21st century Labour needs to understand the needs and aspirations of these workers. They need to understand that many freelancers in the industries described above work this way not because they can’t get a permanent job but because they choose to. Freelancers don’t need employment rights; temporary and agency workers do. Freelance workers are often competing directly against large corporations in the same market, yet Labour’s IR35 policy treated them as employees for tax purposes and denied them the capital to allow them to invest in training and development or even any other business development. It didn’t allow them to draw a dividend on their profits they had made, the work they had done. But allowed it shareholders in bigger firms to draw dividends off the work that other people had done. That can’t be right. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 114%;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 114%;">I could requote the old clause IV – ‘to secure for [people] by hand or by brain the full fruits of their labour’. Indeed if I really wanted to I could quote Marx and mention ‘surplus labour’ and explain that exploitation occurs when those appropriating surplus labour – whether in the form of surplus value, surplus product or direct surplus labour – are different to those performing surplus labour. But that wouldn’t be a very New Labour thing to say. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 114%;"><br />
</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 114%;">Modernise<br />
</span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 114%;"><br />
But a New Labour word to use, is ‘modernise’ – Labour needs to modernise its view and understanding of the labour market itself and that people will not only have several jobs in their lifetime, will have possibly different careers and will often pass through periods of working freelance and running their own business. More people than ever before are now working as freelancers or running small businesses and they are key to our future prosperity. <o:p></o:p></span></div><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 114%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 114%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br />
</span><br />
If Labour wants to succeed in the future then it needs to think about how regulations benefit, harm or bypass freelancers, temporary workers and small firms. Acknowledging that IR35 was a mistake would be a good start. It needs to think about small business and the self-employed just not as being vehicles through which taxes can be collected, but as drivers of our future prosperity and key components in building a sustainable and empowered community. To do so Ed, David, Diane, Ed and Andy need to understand how all these modes of work operate and there are many of us in the party who will help them, because today’s Mondeo man and Clio woman have in the past and will in the future vote accordingly.</span>Labour Small Business Forumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17887788566020306579noreply@blogger.com0Westminster, London, UK51.5001524 -0.1262361999999939151.322796399999994 -0.39052969999999393 51.6775084 0.1380573000000061