UK Business Lobby Boss Shevaun Haviland Talks Andy Burnham, Growth

**Caroline Hepker** (0:00)
Shevaun Haviland, thank you so much for joining me.
I want to get in straight away to a conversation around what the shape of the next UK government might look like. How much time does Andy Burnham have to turn the tide, do you think, and to help UK businesses?

**Shevaun Haviland** (0:17)
Well, good morning.
Andy Burnham has, what, two and a half years to the next general election, so he has a very short amount of time to turn the tide. He, whoever comes into Downing Street next is going to face the same challenges that we are currently looking at. And what he needs to have laser focus on is delivering economic growth. And why is that the case? Because growing businesses mean more jobs, which means more taxes, back to the chance, and which means more money to pay for our teachers and nurses, right? The fiscal, tight fiscal situation that government is in. So that needs to be his number one priority.

**Caroline Hepker** (1:00)
OK. When Keir Salmer came into government, we gave him, a little bit strangely, 100 days when it was based on the US system. Does Burnham get that much time this time round?

**Shevaun Haviland** (1:11)
I think so. I think that's only 100 days is probably only fair. We are all, of course, still waiting to see Andy Burnham lay out his economic strategy. We, of course, have been delighted to advise him on what we think is going on. You know, at the chambers, I have the delight of travelling the country, meeting businesses week in and week out. And they all tell me the same thing, which is at the moment, they are really struggling.
Successive governments have added more and more cost to business. We estimate there's been a 70% increase in cost to business over 10 years.
More recently, we've seen an increase in national insurance. The minimum wage has gone up 45% in the last five years. It is really hard. And while we are shackling that ambition with that tsunami of costs, we are not going to see growth. So, A, the government needs to look very quickly at how we can relieve some of that. But what I'm going to talk about today at our global conference, where we have 700 businesses in the QE2 Centre, is actually there are some leavers that government need to pull very quickly around increasing trade, helping SME supply chains and really helping UK PLC adopt AIs is coming down the track.

**Caroline Hepker** (2:33)
OK.
Can we be honest about how bad it was for business under Keir Starmer? Tanking confidence, dismal growth, raising taxes, the Starmer government was pretty bad, wasn't it, for British business? Is that how you see it?

**Shevaun Haviland** (2:49)
The current government, or the now outgoing government, look, had some difficult, they had some difficult geopolitical headwinds, adapt to, they did some good things, but they did some things that really were hard for business. So the national insurance increase, we expected an increase, but not as much as that and not with increasing the threshold. The idea was, of course, that then the government were going to do some other things to help business. So we did see some great stuff on more infrastructure being signed off, expansion of Heathrow, Gatwick, Northern Powerhouse Rail, New Nuclear, etc. And that's really good for local supply chains. We saw free trade agreements being signed. We need to make those useful for business.
But the additional taxes along with global tariffs, etc., businesses haven't yet managed to recover from that. And as I said, successive governments have added cost to business. And we really feel like we're at breaking point.

**Caroline Hepker** (3:48)
At breaking point, okay.
What happens if an incoming administration, it seems highly likely that it will be led by Andy Burnham. What happens if that incoming UK government becomes even more left wing than what we've seen before? Would that be worse?

**Shevaun Haviland** (4:06)
What do you mean by left wing?

**Caroline Hepker** (4:07)
Well, in terms of the possibility of higher taxes for higher spending, would the BCC, for example, be in favour of a major spending plan for UK infrastructure, even if that means borrowing more?

**Shevaun Haviland** (4:22)
So any new government has to have economic growth as its number one focus.
Literally, increasing taxes for business will be a road to ruin. There is absolutely no way that increasing tax and business is going to get us anywhere near economic growth, and we are just going to spiral down. More lack of confidence from business, more holding on to their money, lack of investment, it is a vicious circle. So we absolutely have to see no new tax for business.