Healey: Squeezed businesses also need ‘breathing space’
Chancellor John Healey has said he is “just as concerned” by costs facing businesses as those facing households, adding that bosses also required “breathing space” to manage burdens from energy, labour and supply chains.
Echoing Andy Burnham’s pledge to provide “breathing space” on the cost of living, Healey said he would aim to ease cost pressures on firms and provide a “consistency of purpose” to make financial services firms more competitive.
In his address to business leaders in Canada, the chancellor said: “People have been facing increasing pressures. They’ve been feeling that lack of breathing space in their life. But so have all of you.
“I’m just as concerned about the cost of business as I am about the cost of living, tax, energy, supply chain costs [and] labour.
“I know that businesses large and small have felt really squeezed. And when the prime minister and I talk about building a new economy that helps people live well, that must involve stepping up our support for and work with business.”
He outlined his five priorities as Chancellor. This covered fiscal discipline, “growth in every postcode”, backing Britons, driving wealth creation and bringing down the cost of living and doing business.
“I want us to deepen our government’s relationship, our Treasury’s relationship, with business. I want to deepen it based on a shared ambition for Britain. Not just an ambition for success in this Square Mile, but for every part of the country or – as the prime minister would say – in every postcode.”
City at the heart of the economy
The new Chancellor praised the re-appointment of Lucy Rigby as the City minister, who would lead on making UK financial services more competitive.
He also said the appointment of former City executive Baron David Pitt-Watson, who worked with KPMG and Aviva, as a parliamentary secretary in the Treasury would signal the government’s ambition to put the City “at the heart of our flourishing future British economy”.
Healey’s rallying call for “lifting the pessimism” that he said “eroded our own prosperity” was offered in the first speech he offered to the City since becoming the Chancellor.
Last week, Burnham promised to be more pro-business than Sir Keir Starmer’s premiership.
Business relations with the Labour government soured after Rachel Reeves slapped a £25bn tax hike on employers to fund public spending that covered larger pay packages for doctors, teachers and train drivers.
Burnham has characterised his approach to governing as “business-friendly socialism”, with some hospitality bosses and figures such as Sacha Lord and the chef Tom Kerridge previously backing the Prime Minister’s leadership.