front bench interview
As Conservative Front Bench spokesman on many are not – and a separate application still
small businesses, Mark Prisk MP is well placed has to be made in each instance.”
to scope out his Party’s policies in this area. Mark Prisk was sceptical about BERR’s
There will certainly be a streamlining of ac- Solutions for Business strategy, which has aimed
cess to the kind of information needed to set to reduce some 3000 individual ‘services’ to
up and administer a business. the business community through clustering
“We think that there should be a more com- into just 30 discrete ‘parcels’.
prehensive web-enabled information service
available online through PCs, laptops and
mobile devices like the Blackberry.
Strategy mistaken
“Provided as a government service, it would The declared intention was to make it easier
be a completely free source of information: a for businesses to identify the services required.
re-organised Business Link service would no “I believe that approach is mistaken for a
doubt provide this first tier of business infor- number of reasons. The re-packaging is a bran-
mation while a new infrastructure is being de- ding exercise; a cosmetic process that can
veloped.” only bring about benefits if the components
which go to make up each of those thirty
Proposals for SME services
streams match the needs of the entrepreneur.”
There is criticism, too, of the way that advice
It is easy to make broad-brush commitments – as distinct from information – is dispensed to
when in opposition, but Mr Prisk was able to the smallest businesses in particular.
flesh out one of these proposals. “It is not pro-
ductive for an entrepreneur to enter similar
“We think that there should be a more comprehensive web-
information about the business when regis-
tering a company, or applying for VAT regis-
enabled information service available online through PCs,
tration and filing data with the tax authorities.
laptops and mobile devices like the Blackberry. Provided as a
“There would be significant savings if the government service, it would be a completely free source of
information could be entered once and the req-
uisite parts of it made available to all of the
information: a re-organised Business Link service would no
organisations involved. While some of the indi-
doubt provide this first tier of business information while a new
vidual forms required are already available online, infrastructure is being developed.”
The Informed Executive
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