In an interview with Insider Media, Alexandra Depledge, who is an advisor to Chancellor Rachel Reeves, insisted that she wasn’t ‘anti-hospitality’ but said the UK economy needed to move away from ‘slow and steady’ SMEs in favour of fast-growing start-ups.
“We don’t need any more restaurants. I’m not anti-hospitality but that’s not where my efforts are,” she said.
Depledge, who is founder and CEO of architecture firm Resi, defended tax rises but acknowledged anger in the business community.
“B&M might be one of the biggest employers but in 10 years’ time it shouldn’t be.
“Men who are pissed off with life turn to Nigel Farage because all the jobs they could do are gone and we need to replace them.
“It’s quite incredulous that people are agog that taxes have gone up. You don’t inject the level of support into an economy that we did during Covid, and not expect that something has got to give.
“We have a high debt ratio. The third largest item on our P&L is servicing our debt. 10p in every pound goes to paying down debt. I’m not sure this government had much choice.
“You have to make trade-offs but people want easy answers so they turn to the likes of Jeremy Corbyn or Nigel Farage and it’s misguided and dangerous. By and large the government didn’t have much choice.”
Depledge said the economy needed to move its focus from established SMEs and pay more attention to newer startups in fast-growing sectors.
“We could do more that’s pro-growth, I got the Better Business Bureau (BBB) to create ten new growth funds. We are really good at starting businesses [in the UK] but we are really bad at scaling them.
“SMEs play a massive role in the economy but they have played the same size role for the last 50 years. Corporates are happy with 2 per cent growth year on year. That won’t grow the size of the UK pie.
“It’s going to be our high growth, high innovation scale ups and startups.”