Sheffield Chamber Statement on Upcoming Autumn Statement

16th November 2016

Speaking in anticipation of next weeks Autumn statement, Richard Wright, Executive Director of Sheffield Chamber of Commerce talked about what he would like to see from the Chancellor.

"This is a very interesting, and challenging, time for the Government to be making such a significant statement and I suspect there have been very difficult departmental discussions behind the scenes. We have had two votes in 2016 (the European Referendum and the US election) which definitely contain a massive protest vote. People are sick of the establishment and feel that the system does not work for them. "I am influenced by the premise that if you want to keep money moving in society give it to the poor because they will spend it immediately. The rich will hoard much of it or buy assetts offshore. As our previous President, Jill Thomas of Future Life Wealth Management, pointed out in her speech recently, Quantitative Easing has not delivered what we wanted and has resulted in the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. It has also had the effect of putting enormous pressure on Final Salary Pension Schemes and we are starting to see businesses fail because of their underfunded schemes. "Her proposal, and I think its a great one, is for the Chancellor to give an immediate 2 year moratorium on VAT. Its cheaper than QE and benefits everybody in society with immediate effect. We might even be able to start withdrawing some of the QE money and start to put right some of the long term problems it has caused. There are other ways of doing it but my wish would be to see measures that address this issue. The people have spoken and politicians need to listen. Interestingly, now we have voted to leave Europe we can make changes to VAT!! "More locally we would like to see confirmation and acceleration of the general travel toward decentralisation. This means confirmation of the devolution deal and a regional mayor. As a Chamber we have debated many times the way the devolution money is being spent (we have serious concerns about the number of employees in the LEP and the methodology of the growth hub) or that the mayor will be a political appointment (rather than the electorate being given a choice between people with a track record for growing an economy and having enough independence and authority to bring the different local authorities together) but we do believe in devolved powers and will continue to support that. "In other areas we see the effect of "austerity" on things like health, education and investment. I said several years ago that I would judge the coalition government not on how it made the cuts but more on how it built the economy. I fully subscribe to debates about fairness, poverty, division and how we overcome them. We have to distribute the wealth more fairly but what happens when there is no wealth left to distribute? We have to trade and innovate ourselves out of this mess so the Chancellor must focus massively on this. International Trade support is critical but it must be done in a completely different way to how it has been done before. "Two other things that I hope the Chancellor has achieved albeit I suspect they won't be announced in the budget. Firstly I hope he has persuaded the home secretary to reverse some of the disgusting language she used in her party conference speech about tightening up visas for international students. We should be doing the opposite and encouraging more. They shouldn't even be on the immigration numbers. Secondly I would like confirmation that HS2 is going ahead with the branches from Birmingham to Manchester and Leeds. Putting aside the controversy of the final route (albeit we have fought for the local solution that delivers the best economic return) ensuring we get an HS2 service in Sheffield City Region if HS2 goes ahead is critical. "There are lots of other things I would like to see like reductions in flight fuel duties, combination of income tax and NI payments to reduce legislation or review of the business rates system but I'm sure there will always be a plethora of "smaller" changes and some will work for us and some won't. "Mr Hammond cancelled the 2020 target for reaching budget parity almost immediately after he was appointed. That is a good thing in my opinion but only if we use the money to build a resiliant, sustainable and strong economy. Politicians have a tendency to talk about, and score points from, the symptoms like the NHS, education and welfare. People in this country deserve better. They need leaders who can tackle the cause."