As the Budget moves closer into view, it looks like business execs will be met with stark awakenings in post-August office reset, writes Chris Hayward
As summer holidays fade into the rear-view mirror, businesses, investors and politicians are turning their thoughts to the Budget.
Economists predict – with unnerving, unseemly uniformity – the need for the Chancellor to shore up the UK’s precarious public finances by raising further tax revenues. Unsurprisingly, this reality is not lost on those toiling in the Square Mile.
Let me speak plainly. The post-holiday return to the office will present a stark awakening for senior business leaders and government ministers lucky enough not to have been called into action over summer.
Given the extremes presented by the external operating environment, the focus for business leaders must be on influencing what they can change for the better.
As parliament returns, three areas on my mind are attitudes, investment and skills. Let me address each briefly.
Let’s get excited about the office again
First, enough with the gloom. The UK is, and will remain, a fantastic place to do business. You can see this by the firms moving back into the City of London. And it’s no secret that I would like to see more workers back in those offices too.
Junior colleagues can only learn so much through online interactions. Wannabe traders miss listening to deals being done. M&A specialists cannot operate in a vacuum. They will acquire nothing by doing so. And none of us now in senior leadership roles in the City learnt anything from our desks at home about how to deal with the trickiest of crises. Innovation does not happen in isolation.
Nor are the rewards of in-person working confined to offices. The Square Mile plays host to a mosaic of cultural assets and green spaces, ranging from the Barbican to the newly reopened Finsbury Circus Gardens. We design our buildings for shade and intersperse sustainable office space with pocket parks, historic churchyards and restaurants in the sky.
It’s easy for me to be dewy-eyed about the virtues of the City. But I want to ensure its future is as rosy as I recall when I first walked the Square Mile’s winding alleys.
So while summer is over and we’re back to business, here’s my prescription for ministers charged with maintaining the City’s vitality.
Businesses need a competitive tax regime
Focus on inward investment. Planning and regulatory reforms must represent an opening salvo, not an endgame, in creating the conditions for business to flourish. The Office for Investment: Financial Services – aimed at raising a further £10bn for government coffers by the end of the decade – must move from ambition to action.
Moreover, we cannot underestimate the role of a competitive tax environment on business investment.
Government can build further on its restored relationship with the EU to improve trading links broken by Brexit. Strengthening ties in financial and professional services can unlock capital, innovation and investment to support long-term economic resilience on both sides.
We can and must look further afield for growth, too. This week I am in India. My preparation for this trip reminds me just how important financial services are in the UK’s investment pitch and how critical open co-operation in global trade remains.
Let me conclude by restating the importance of skills. As I wrote last fortnight, the UK’s talent pipeline is leaking. This cannot be allowed to continue. Employers have a significant role to play in ensuring businesses have access to the skills they need to succeed, as does government, by showing the world that the UK remains open to talent.
I know that solutions to these problems are all within our grasp. With the right attitude, conditions for investment and talent, the UK can really prosper. But looking at the world around us, there’s not a moment to lose.
Chris Hayward is policy chairman of the City of London Corporation