CBI urges Conservative Government to “prioritise stability at March Budget” and “lock-in productivity growth and future UK prosperity”
The Government must back businesses’ growth ambitions in order to build greater prosperity across the UK. That’s according to the CBI’s Budget submission letter. With firms facing heightened economic uncertainty in 2017, Britain’s largest business group has expressed the view that the Government must work in partnership with companies to prioritise stability.
The CBI welcomes the Chancellor’s move to one major fiscal event a year and looks forward to working with the Government on the details of its modern Industrial Strategy. To bolster the UK’s productivity over the longer term, a focus on education and skills is the key to improving people’s life chances across the whole country.
Business priorities in the CBI’s Budget submission include:
• committing to a funding plan for high-value technical education reforms for 16-18 year olds, as recommended by the Government’s independent Lord Sainsbury Review
• building on the success of the R&D tax credit schemes by increasing the clarity, certainty and simplicity around claims, while at the same time introducing a supercharged credit for pre-commercialisation activity to build on research strengths
• tackling the UK’s “outdated” Business Rates regime by bringing forward the switch from Retail Price Index (RPI) to Consumer Price Index (CPI) uprating to 2018-2019
The CBI’s letter also calls on the Government to make sure it doesn’t add to the mounting burden of costs facing firms for just doing business.