Small Business Commissioner tells North East firms that ‘your message was well heard’

Emma Jones was in Newcastle to meet business founders

The Government’s leading official for supporting small firms has met business leaders in Newcastle and told them that “your message was well heard”.

Emma Jones, the small business commissioner, has been in the North East to meet leaders of small businesses as part of a series of “SME safaris” around the country.

Writing on social media after the event, Ms Jones said that she had been told that business leaders want “less admin and more time to spend on growth”.

She was also told that recent Government policy changes – including a rise in the minimum wage and equalisation of pay rates for younger people – had had a significant impact on many small firms.

She said: “The increases to National Insurance and the minimum wage were discussed with a reflection on the minimum wage being the same across the whole UK rather than being reflective of local economies, ie the cost of living in the North East is less than, for example, in London.

“The impact of these changes on hiring practices was clearly not the intention and a repeated point made on safaris has been the impact on the recruitment of young people, including the role hospitality plays in being a ‘national service’ that trains young people in skills of communication, finance, and business.

That first job is critical to any young person and although all the businesses we spoke to want to employ young workers, they are no longer defaulting to only recruiting the young in entry level roles.”

Ms Jones said her meeting with North East business leaders had also discussed the need to create a tax system for businesses that encourages people who take risks when starting their companies.

She said: “All the founders met are on a mission to keep building and investing and what they asked for was an environment to encourage and celebrate this. Your message was well heard.” The Office of the Small Business Commissioner was set up by the previous Conservative Government under the Enterprise Act 2016, primarily to tackle the issue of overdue payments and unfavourable payment practices in the private sector.

Ms Jones was appointed as small business commissioner last year.

A trained accountant, she set up a technology business before founding the Enterprise Nation business support group.

Last week she welcomed new measures from the Government to crack down on late payments which include giving her office the power to investigate businesses suspected of poor payment practices, adjudicate payment disputes outside of the court process, and levy financial penalties on businesses that persistently pay their suppliers late.