ENCOURAGING SMALL BUSINESSES

Interviewed by Andrew Marr yesterday, David Cameron touched on new policies he is announcing to encourage enterprise and those aspiring to start businesses.
Here are the measures he is proposing:
• Ending restrictions on people starting a business in social housing, to enable social tenants to become entrepreneurs;
• Increasing the statutory threshold over which the Government can petition to make a business insolvent, in order to stop the current practice of pursuing businesses over small amounts of unpaid taxes and pushing them into bankruptcy;
• Reducing the number of forms needed to register a new business - moving towards a ‘one-click’ registration model - with the aim of making Britain the fastest place in the world to start a business.

David Cameron made the following statement explaining his desire to see a new raft of entrepreneurs create businesses to help Britain trade its way out of recession:

“We are going to get out of this recession by trading our way out, by businesses deciding to create wealth and to go after new markets, to export. It takes 13 to 14 days to start a new business in this country, in America it’s half as long, we have the ambition of making us one of the fastest countries in the world to start up a new business.
“The insolvency threshold is currently £750 we would lift that to £2,000 because when you look at the figures more small businesses have gone bankrupt in this recession than in previous recessions and a number have been pushed there by the Government itself. It may sound like a small thing but I think it’s significant, a huge number of small business are started in people’s homes but you know what, many social landlords forbid you to run a business from your home, we’re going to change that as well in discussion with social landlords.
“So, these are three big changes to help small businesses. That’s where the wealth, that’s where the jobs, that’s where the enterprise has got to come from and to help with that we have to get rid of this anti aspiration, anti achievement culture."


Small business will lead Britain on the road to recovery. I welcome any changes that make it easier for businesses to start and to grow.