Britain is in a growth emergency. But our political class refuses to act like it. Government after government, prime minister after prime minister, it has failed to take the radical action required.
Economic growth has been on a downward trajectory for 70 years. We have gone from one of the richest countries in the world to the second lowest GDP per capita in the G7.
Now the emergency is reaching new, previously unknown levels. Last year, the net number of new businesses collapsed by over 60%. Every month, nearly 1,900 British businesses go bust – a third higher than the average in the decade following the 2008 financial crisis. A quarter of UK manufacturers have either already moved production overseas or are actively considering it. London, once the financial capital of the world, has slipped to 23rd in the global IPO rankings, trailing Spain and Turkey and only just above Greece.
Building anything from local care homes to major national rail lines takes far too long and costs far too much
Meanwhile, an entire generation has been denied the basic opportunities that their parents took for granted. Youth unemployment has nearly doubled in the last four years and the number of young people not earning or learning has reached over 1 million. Housebuilding is falling, home ownership is increasingly out of reach and the infrastructure and services the British people rely on are failing to deliver.
Our basic infrastructure has become an international joke. Parts of the country have gone without access to clean, running water in the winter only to be hit by hosepipe bans three months later. Building anything from local care homes to major national rail lines takes far too long and costs far too much. And our energy prices remain among the highest in the developed world.
Travel outside of Westminster and you will find the same story time and again. Britain’s industries are decimated. Britain’s infrastructure is broken. The lives of British people have been getting worse year after year after year. It is clear: we are in national emergencies in almost every area, all at once.
The only way out is economic growth, or more specifically growth in GDP per person. When Andy Burnham becomes our seventh prime minister in 10 years, he must take the radical action necessary to grow our GDP per capita by 3% every year.
Today, we’ve launched Kickstart – our plan for what Andy Burnham must do in his first 30 days to deliver the change the British people demand.
First, Burnham must force Parliament to sit all summer. Radical action is needed now, not only in September. National emergencies are not paused over the summer because MPs aren’t sitting. Industries will continue to collapse, companies will continue to go bankrupt, families will continue to struggle to afford the basics and people will continue losing their jobs. Every day Parliament is in recess is another day where stagnation and decline continues.
Second, on day one, he must pass the LFG Emergency Energy Bill to get bills down immediately. This means scrapping the stealth taxes on bills called levies, as well as reopening the North Sea for drilling and using the extra tax revenue to cut bills. Burnham should: auction grid connections to end the years-long waiting list, stop all new CfD contracts and abandon the Clean Power 2030 targets that pushed civil servants towards negotiating contracts that do not have the British people’s interests at heart. We must abandon the balancing of priorities by the energy regulators, NESO and Ofgem, and focus solely on minimising energy costs, subject to security of supply. For the long-term, Burnham must implement all 47 recommendations from the Fingleton Review. It is only with cheap, secure and reliable energy that Britain can become rich again.
Next, the Government must axe the tax traps on working parents. Right now, those earning between £60,000 and £80,000 a year can face effective tax rates of over 50%. The state should reward aspiration and hard work, not penalise parents for accepting promotions or create a system that gives more to the government than to the person doing the work.
Moreover, Burnham must declare war on the quangos that make growth illegal. We need legislation that explicitly places an expiry date on all arms length bodies – every five years, the Government must choose whether to renew them, or not. Bodies responsible for delivering government services should be folded back into departments, while independent regulators and watchdogs would need reconfirmation by parliament. If the existence of a quango cannot be justified, it must die by default.
Burnham should not let the state protect the incumbents. All plans to ‘privilege’ established media companies over smaller creators must also be immediately abandoned. The state should encourage small businesses and independent creators to expand and scale here – it should not be forcing social media companies to deboost their content purely because they are new. Whatever the industry, we must become the best place to start, grow and scale a business – and that begins by making sure that new players are not disadvantaged by government policy.
Every week for the next three months, LFG will demand new radical actions that Andy Burnham must take to end decline and save Britain. It is time to put the British people first, not the consultants, lawyers and lobbyists.
The failure of our political class to solve Britain’s growth emergency has made the lives of millions across the country worse and worse, year after year. But it can end. We do not have to accept decline. We do not have to accept incompetence and indecision. We can just do stuff. We can just build new companies and new infrastructure. The country of Brunel and Berners-Lee, of Nightingale and Churchill, of Lovelace and Turing, can come back from this crisis. We have done it before. We can do it again.
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