POLICY 60-SECOND BRIEFING IoD IN THE NEWS
In late summer, the Of ice for National Statistics revealed that the British economy had contracted in the second quarter. It attributed this to the running down of goods that had been stockpiled before the March Brexit deadline. The IoD’s chief economist, Tej Parikh, noted that the news was a “confirmation of the concerns that businesses have been expressing about the economy”. His call for the government to give businesses “a significant shot in the arm to return investment and productivity growth to the country after a prolonged period of uncertainty” was covered widely, with the Daily Telegraph, the Financial Times, the Independent and The Times among the newspapers reporting his comments. Parikh also appeared on CNN’s The Money Pit programme
(pictured) to discuss what improvements the government could make.
With the October Brexit deadline approaching, the IoD continued to press the government to give SMEs greater support throughout the process. In an interview with The Times, interim DG Edwin Morgan observed that many smaller firms were finding its of icial advice “too technical, too jargonistic”. Earlier, the IoD’s head of Europe and trade policy, Allie Renison, fleshed out the case for off ering SMEs financial support – in the form of tax credits or vouchers – in op-eds for the Daily Telegraph and The Times. Providing such assistance before the upheaval would be preferable to “scrambling to adjust after the fact”, she argued in the former article.
Broadband: the UK’s full-fibre speed challenge In recent years the government has
focused on rolling out “superfast” broadband, which offers download speeds exceeding 24 megabits per second (Mbps). This has largely been achieved through “fibre to the cabinet”, whereby copper cables still cover the final stretch from the junction box on the street to the premises served. In July, the Speedtest Global Index, a monthly international comparison of fixed-broadband speeds, ranked the UK in a lowly 41st place, just above Slovenia. During the Conservative leadership election campaign that month, Boris Johnson pledged to deliver full-fibre broadband, which offers download speeds exceeding 1,000Mbps, to every British home by 2025. That’s eight years sooner than currently planned. The IoD had called for this shortened schedule in 2018, reflecting members’ long-standing concerns about the relative weakness of the UK’s digital infrastructure. At the start of this year, seven per cent of premises in the UK had full-fibre broadband connections. Since then, Openreach, BT’s infrastructure arm, has added about 80,000 homes a month – a figure that will need to roughly quintuple in order to meet Johnson’s target. Bodies from the telecoms industry have already set out a range of policies to help achieve this acceleration. They include increased funding for engineer training; planning reforms to expedite cable installation; and the exemption of fibre infrastructure from business-rate calculations.
No-deal Brexit preparations Members’ key concerns: 53%
UK economic conditions.
55%
Uncertain trading status with the EU.
42%
Regulatory compliance.
director.co.uk 53 39% Skills shortages. 15%
say they are fully prepared for a no-deal outcome.
53% 42%
say they have done all they can, but cannot prepare fully.
didn’t find the government’s no-deal planning guide helpful.
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