In Focus: All clear?
Watching George Osborne deliver his Spending Review speech yesterday was illuminating. Not because he still sounds like a preppy public schoolboy reading out a passage from a Latin textbook, but because of the two people sat either side of him.
Cameron, to the right, looking pumped-up, yet desperately sincere; Nick Clegg nearly visibly wincing every time Osborne announced something his backbenchers will clearly get in a flap about in the very near future.
These two, of course, are the people in the know. They’ve signed off the measures announced in the Spending Review. They’ve known for weeks about the £6bn cuts in Whitehall, and the half a million jobs that will go in the public sector. The rest of us have been left guessing since the Emergency Budget in June. And doesn’t that seem a long time ago now?
The main worry among the business community is a state of flux, I’ve found. Wherever I’ve gone over the last couple of months, I’ve heard concerns that the private sector is in a “vacuum”. They’ve waited a long time for the Spending Review, and they want to know if and when it’s going to make any difference.
Osborne said yesterday that he’s giving businesses “room to grow”. He’ll create adult apprenticeships. He’ll reform student fees to let universities free. He’ll create a ‘green investment bank’ fund. This is all nice, cuddly stuff, and sounds great in the headlines, but Osborne is relying on the private sector an awful lot.
The onus, then, seems to be on SMEs to flourish and take up the slack that a devastated public sector leaves behind. Again, there are worries about inertia. Banks still aren’t lending to SMEs, despite what you might hear, and other forms of equity are hard to come by unless you have a cast-iron guarantee that you’re going to make investors a bucketful of money in a few short years.
For sure, there are opportunities out there – but there always will be. What businesses want is security and a clear path forward. And most of all, they want to be able to borrow money to grow again, and that was something that wasn’t mentioned at all in yesterday’s Spending Review. Until that happens, businesses will surely feel, in the words of Mike Chambers of Loughborough-based 3M, that they’ll have to continue to look inward and concentrate on simply surviving. A bit like the Liberal Democrats come the next election, you could say. I couldn’t possibly comment.
Recent Posts
Services
Dealmakers Services Directory
Directory Find an advisor to help you buy, sell or invest
Property Services Directory
Find an advisor across property services
Commercial Property Finder
Full commercial property listings in the Midlands
Guides
Midlands City View
The news, features and analysis that matter for your city
International Trade
Our guide provides expert analysis on a range of trade destinations
42 under 42 Members
The latest class of the Midlands brightest young business people
- Contact us
- Midlands
- North West
- South West
- Wales
- Yorkshire
- Other regions
- 0121 232 0980
- 0161 907 9711
- 0117 906 5900
- 02920 434500
- 0113 220 4410
- 0161 907 9718
- Insider regions
- Central & East
- Ireland
- Midlands
- North East
- North West
- South East
- South West
- Wales
- Yorkshire