Thursday 5 March saw hundreds of business people within the UK Chamber network, including our own Nova Fairbank, Head of Policy for Norfolk Chambers, come together at the QEII Centre in London to hear from business leaders and politicians, all debating the future of business beyond 2020 at the annual British Chambers of Commerce Conference.
The focus for this year’s conference was on people, trade and investment in infrastructure. Adam Marshall, the Director General of the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) opened the conference by highlighting the opportunities and challenges facing the UK business community. He noted the increased costs on business around immigration, international trade and the importance of delivering infrastructure investment, such as HS2 and Heathrow Airport expansion, to help enable greater economic growth. Adam emphasised the need for business and government to work together to find shared solutions.
The delegates also heard from Dr Pavel Adrjan from Indeed who advised that location, location, location was critical when trying to secure a job or identify an employee. Businesses and job seekers needed to widen their searches and look over county borders to find the advantage.
Panel Debate: Creating the work places of the future
Jane Boardman, Chair of the Workforce Training and Development Commission chaired a panel discussion with Annie Aurebach from Flex, Beckie Rowland from Greggs and Jason Groves from Dive in Festival. They highlighted that the more diverse and flexible companies tended to be more successful, innovative and productive. An example being Microsoft Japan, who introduced a 4 day week and saw productivity increase by 40%. Another being that by allowing your employees to be who they truly are, means that their energy and efforts are put into doing a great job and not hiding their true selves. Becky from Greggs explained how they were tapping into an untapped employee market by working with ex-offenders through their ‘Fresh Start’ programme.
Peter Coutts, CEO of Coutts told the audience that he thought business was facing headwinds with uncertainty and fast changing tech. He wanted to see reductions in ‘well intentioned’ regulations that were proving costly to business. He felt there was a role for banks and the government to work in partnership to remove regulatory restrictions and help improve productivity.
The headline speaker was Matt Hancock MP, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. Mr Hancock stated that “Business done right, was a force for good.” He then highlighted the government’s plans for dealing with the Coronavirus. He said “Government was preparing for the worst and working for the best.” He outlined that they were ‘following the science’ to ensure the best most proactive approach and were working on 4 key areas:
Contain – Detection of the virus and taking advantage of any early wins
Delay – Slow the spread of the virus, to avoid impacting on the winter season for the NHS. Whilst seeking to minimise economic and social impacts/costs.
Research – Ongoing work to understand what drugs are already available that can be used to help fight the virus
Mitigate – Focus the resources of the UK; keep essential services going; look at a range of options to support supply chains – some of which will be announced in the Budget on 11 March
After lunch, the audience heard from Greg Hands MP, Minister of State, Department of International Trade (DIT), who told of the creation of a strong negotiating team who were working towards the key Free Trade Agreements. He highlighted that UK exports rose by 5% in the 12 months up to December 2019. He outlined the support that was available for more UK businesses to export such as UK Export Finance.
Climate change came to the top of the agenda with speeches from both Emma Gilthorpe from Heathrow Airport and Claire Harbord from Drax.
Emma Gilthorpe picked up on the recent High Court ruling against the Heathrow expansion. She stated that “Heathrow was the largest UK ‘port’ – larger than both Felixstowe and Southampton and that there could be no global Great Britain without the Heathrow Airport expansion.” She said: “Carbon is the enemy, not aviation.” In her opinion no large scale infrastructure improvements would hold back Great Britain and our country would lose out to other countries who did invest and expand their airport hubs.
Claire Harbord outlined Drax’s plans to stop using coal to generate power by 2021 and that currently 90% of their power was generated using renewable sources. They have ambitious plans to be Zero Carbon by 2040.
Panel Debate: Keeping Britain Open for Business
The final panel debate of the day was in international trade and chaired by Tom Parker, the President of British Chambers of Commerce in EU-Belgium. The panel included Dr Anna Jerzewska, a Customs and Trade Specialist, John Mahon, the Director General for Export and Investment at DIT, Lucy Frankel from Vegware – a plant-based fast food packaging company, and Sam Martin, CEO of Apothecary 87 – a company who exported to 135 countries in their first year of trading.
The panel highlighted the impact on SME businesses of the forthcoming changes in tariffs, regulations and quotas as of 01 January 2021. It was noted that information was likely to be given at very last minute – due to the complexity and sheer quantity of negotiations needed. A plea was made for government to give as much notice as possible to enable businesses to prepare for the inevitable changes and the need for an implementation period – perhaps 3 months to enact the changes. Mr Mahon highlighted that DIT would welcome greater dialogue with the business community to understand the challenges being faced and that they would welcome any solutions and mitigations that business can suggest.
