It looks like there’s a groundswell building behind this, with Derbyshire & Nottinghamshire Chamber of Commerce launching their own wish-list of things the government should do to help the private sector build the economic recovery which it says it wants to see.
To be fair to the Chamber, it is not jumping on a bandwagon here. At the end of December last year, its chief executive, George Cowcher, called on government to make 2011 a year for growth.
The Chamber – the third biggest in the country, remember, and a fairly big player round here – has now put some flesh on the bones of that wish-list.
So far, it is less specific than the measures set out by Sir Richard, but what is interesting is that it sings to that age-old business torch song, less is more.
In other words, one of the biggest contributions government might make to the economy is to stop thinking it can solve every problem under the sun by passing a new law.
A fair few business people are of the view that the ‘initiativitis’ which afflicted the last government meant it did rather too much of that, almost to the point where it was trying to codify common sense.
John Dowson, the Chamber’s imposing policy director, told me yesterday that while there are some signs that the coalition is trying to strip out some of the nonsenses, others are still slipping through.
So the biggest difference government could make is to adopt what he called an ‘enterprise state-of-mind’ – understanding the entrepreneur in everything it does and perhaps designing regulations with an approach based on the principle of ‘how easy will this rule be to comply with’.
That’s a tough ask – not least because there are those in government who genuinely believe they already do this…
Nevertheless, the detail of what the Chamber is asking for does contain some interesting suggestions.
It wants a simpler planning regime for what are obviously business or industrial sites so that they can expand more easily. So provided a change to a building falls within clear guidelines it just gets nodded through rather than going through the often long-winded planning cycle.
It wants government and agencies like UK Trade & Investment to put a whole lot more effort into making it easier for small firms to export. One of the big issues here is Export Credit Guarantees, which have been criticised for focusing too much on big businesses.
This mirrors Sir Richard Lambert’s concern that government policy for business and industry has an unfortunate habit of locking on to the activities of sectors and businesses which are already doing well – of picking winners rather than identifying entrepreneurial growth potential.
My understanding is that government – led by Vince Cable – is hard at work on some kind of business growth initiative which will be unveiled in March. You don’t need to be a political analyst to work out that the main theme in the Budget will be that now the cutbacks have been identified, Government will now take steps to assist growth.
It has some catching up to do on two fronts. While it’s said the right things about a business-led recovery, those measures which do affect firms have been cack-handed – think LEPs and the immigration cap. That betrays a disjointed approach.
Secondly, if the March growth strategy is to work it should take an enterprising approach which recognises that government is best assisting, not doing, and that it is small to medium entrepreneurial Britain that holds the key to long-term growth, not the usual corporate titans.
To borrow from the Starship Enterprise, if it isn’t going to lose the economic argument then it needs to set those policy phasers to stun.
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