As a Plastic Moulding company operating is an ever increasingly competitive marketplace, rising energy costs and overheads we constantly are looking for ways to reduce cost and stay competitive. Plastic Parts Direct hosted Sean Woodcock MP to their Manufacturing premises in Banbury.
Sean is the local Labour MP for the Banbury area and following some correspondence regarding the question of how the government was intending to spend the extra £25 million a day extra revenue they are getting from the rise in fuel costs, he offered to come and see us personally to discuss.
This was admirable in itself as it was obvious we had some difficult questions to raise and it would have been easy to fob us off with a reason not to face them. That said, “Basically the extra revenue is just that, extra revenue. With no plans to actually support companies by reducing duty and tax to keep the already high energy costs under control.”
However, that wasn’t the only question we had. We raised the subject of how increasingly difficult running an SME is due to the Labour policies of extra NI and NMW, plus the introduction of the upcoming employment law changes.
The impression I got was that Whitehall has no idea of what actually happens in the real world outside London, which I suppose is no surprise. They seem to view all companies the same as large multinationals, ‘swimming in money, they can take’.
As a big part of our business is manufacturing and selling plastic accessories into the fenestration and building industries, we questioned the failure to meet the Labour target of 300,000 houses per year with the amount only reaching 195,000 at present.
The answer, ‘Planning rules have changed – which will sort this out’…..ermm [sound of can rattling down the road].
I could go on but I don’t want you going to sleep!
However, I will, just in case you don’t.
Other questions raised were the government’s policy of offshoring emissions for the UK to reach Net Zero, as the emissions still happen just they’re in a different part of the world, normally fossil fuel burning countries while UK manufacturing is priced out the market.
This has now changed to ‘Energy Security’ so is now an excuse not to realise the folly of ‘Net Zero’.
“No substantive support for manufacturing in the face of strong import competition. However, companies can always borrow more with the Government Growth Scheme” …great just more debt!
The government say they want to spend their increased defence budget with companies in the UK, we asked how new suppliers would be able to tap into this as there is a ‘brick wall’ when any try to do this, tbc, there was no answer to this except he would follow it up.
What I would say from all this and something I would encourage is that other SMEs get their MP’s out to visit them so they can put across the difficulties they are encountering and slowly we may actually educate them in the world outside Whitehall, London and their offices. That government shouldn’t be operating an ‘us and them’ society and that by listening to those small businesses that are the backbone of the UK, they can be instrumental in getting the country back to where it should be.
I hate being optimistic!
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