Press Releases
UK SMEs turn backs on Gordon Brown and the Labour Party
19 October 2006
Research reveals overwhelming support for the Conservatives from the UK SME community
UK SMEs do not want Gordon Brown as the next Prime Minister new research has revealed. An Ipsos Mori poll of 100 Managing Directors and Finance Directors of companies with 50 to 250 employees, has shown how disillusioned the UK’s enterprise community are with the current government and the prospect of it continuing under the leadership of Gordon Brown.
65 per cent of those surveyed believed David Cameron would make the best Prime Minister; while only 16% thought Gordon Brown should lead the country. An astonishing 63% stated that they were ‘dissatisfied’ with the way Gordon Brown had been doing his job. Fifty six per cent of those surveyed believed that Gordon Brown’s policies had been poor for their company and 62% believed that the economic condition of the country would deteriorate over the next 12 months.
Most of those surveyed (57%) believed that the Government’s attempts to improve the access to finance for small business had been unsuccessful. These findings were corroborated by research carried out separately by Simply Business, the UK’s leading broker for small business finance and insurance, in a survey of 300 Simply Business customers.
Government-assisted financing through the Small Firms Loan Guarantee Scheme (“SFLGS”) was the least popular means of financing by a wide margin, with only 4% of Simply Business customers choosing to use it to fund their new venture. Businesses instead preferred to seek loans from family members or tap into personal savings when bank financing was not available.
Worse still for the Government, businesses that used the Small Firms Loan Guarantee scheme had the lowest opinion of the support offered by the Government. Without exception, every business that used the SFLGS believed the Government should provide a better financial support structure for start-up businesses. Overall, 96% believed that the Government could provide a better structure for financial support than currently exists.
“These results demonstrate that most UK start-ups do not have sufficient access to government finance and those that do don’t appear to rate it very highly” commented Brad Liebmann, Managing Director of Simply Business.
“This is a sad indictment for a country aspiring to be the world leader for encouraging enterprise development,” Liebmann continued. “By comparison, the loans scheme used by the Small Business Administration in the US provides far greater access for start-ups to government-assisted finance. This has helped the US develop a rate of entrepreneurship that is almost twice that of the UK.”
The results of the survey will come as a blow to the Government’s attempts to increase access to finance through its Small Business Service (SBS). The Department of Trade and Industry established the Small Business Service with the following vision:
• Making the UK the place in the world to start and grow a business
• Build an enterprise society in which businesses of all sizes thrive and achieve their full potential by Increasing the number of people considering going into business
• Improving the overall productivity of small firms and encouraging more enterprise in disadvantaged communities
Clearly UK SMEs are hoping that a new Conservative government will be more effective than Gordon Brown or the Labour government at realising the above vision.
UK SME's turn backs on Gordon Brown and the Labour Party ( doc - 61kb )
For further Information contact:
Julian Budd
Communications Manager
43 Worship Street
London
EC2A 2DX
Tel No. +44 207 9208076
www.simplybusiness.co.uk