Member Article

Miliband promises small business "genuine" support

Small business can expect “real and genuine” engagement from a Labour government and has renewed his promise to cut business rates for more than one million firms.

Speaking to businesses in Gateshead this afternoon, the Labour Leader said he did not want to repeat the cycle of political parties coming into power and tearing up the institutions and processes laid down by their predecessors.

Instead, Mr Miliband said the Labour party would work with small businesses to rebalance the economy, starting with his plan to reverse the Government’s planned cut in corporation tax and lower business rates for smaller operators.

The opposition leader said: “I’m not going to pretend that the enormous challenges this country faces can be wished away on day one of a Labour government.

“But, I hope you will find a Labour government works in partnership with you on the challenges you face across the sectors your businesses represent.”

Mr Miliband set out what he considered to be the six most important challenges to the economy, including: long-term unemployment, skills, long-term energy security, fixing broken markets, solving the problems of the banking system and the rebalancing of the economy between North and South.

On skills, Mr Miliband told the audience that it was unacceptable for some businesses to be providing training and apprenticeships while others in their sector were “free-riding.”

He added: “I think we have a culture that still says university is always best and vocational training is second.

“We have to change that culture and that is about young people taking on responsibility, government taking responsibility for vocational qualifications and its about getting more apprenticeships and training in this country.”

Leading on to employment, Mr Miliband reiterated Labour’s recent proposals to require firms who hire workers from outside of the EU to also hire British apprentices and said firms who wanted government contracts under a Labour government would have to provide apprenticeships.

Mr Miliband touched on the banking sector and put forward his case for a regional investment bank.

He said: “We said that we will have a regional banking system in this country. This means a system where a regional bank’s only responsibility and duty is to invest in the small businesses of that region.

“I think that will be an incredibly important institution to help rebuild our economy. This lesson about banking is not just how we repeat of the crisis we saw in 2008 - it’s about how we tackle the much deeper issue of how we build a banking system that serves the real economy.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .

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