Lord Polak
Main Page: Lord Polak (Conservative - Life peer)
Lord Polak (Con)
My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, on securing this debate. The financial and economic prospects of the UK look far better balanced and stronger than many had predicted. This position has been achieved due to the sensible stewardship of the economy by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and his team and so, after seven years of low interest rates, low inflation, rising living standards and real GDP growth—currently the second fastest in the G7, at 2.2%—today we have the highest full-time employment levels of any major EU economy and a country where the poorest communities have seen a fivefold increase in employment since 2009.
The economy is in a relatively healthy state, but how can this be maintained and enhanced? Those among your Lordships who saw the recent Barclaycard 50th anniversary advert will recall that David Mitchell reminds us that Napoleon may well have called us a “nation of shopkeepers”, but I would like to add that we have always been a nation of entrepreneurs, innovators and inventors—people who work hard and want to get on in life. A story goes that a shopkeeper was dismayed when a brand-new business much like his own opened right next door and erected a sign reading, “Best quality”. He was horrified when another competitor opened up on the other side of his shop and put up an even larger sign reading, “Lowest prices”. The shopkeeper was clearly distraught and panicked, until he got the idea—after all, he was an entrepreneur, innovator and inventor—to put up the biggest sign of all above his shop, which read, “Main entrance”.
It is therefore no surprise that, in 2015, the UK was placed among the leaders of the world in entrepreneurship and as the highest in the EU by several highly rated think tanks. It is also encouraging to see our European partners taking further steps to encourage an environment in which entrepreneurs can flourish across Europe, such as the entrepreneurship 2020 action plan—and I am confident that they will remain our partners in the coming weeks. However, what is perhaps most encouraging is that Britain could soon become a nation of young entrepreneurs, with statistics published by YouGov showing that almost a quarter of young people between the ages of 15 and 18 have the aspiration to start their own business here in the UK.
The Government must therefore continue their determined efforts to support the development of new start-up businesses across the entirety of the United Kingdom and help to fulfil the ambition of the so-called “wired generation” to start businesses in the UK. I am delighted that progress towards this has already begun; Britain’s world-leading tech sector gives us a competitive edge that is not just transforming our daily lives but driving the whole economy forward.
Not only does the UK have one of the lowest corporation tax rates in the G20 but you can register a company within 48 hours for as little as £15 and have access to the second largest workforce in the EU. The Government have also supported a number of initiatives, both directly and indirectly, to encourage people at different stages in life to be entrepreneurial. But to best fulfil the aspirations of those young entrepreneurs and, therefore, to drive the financial and economic prosperity of the UK, we must teach them the skills they need to succeed in life. In key areas such as computer science, we must build on the work of this Government to introduce coding classes in schools and further encourage pioneering UK charities such as the Raspberry Pi Foundation. Its credit card-sized, single-board devices, costing only around £30, have the potential to be used in an unlimited number of ways, and its efforts to use these devices to encourage children to learn more about computing are highly commendable.
The Raspberry Pi Foundation poses the question: why buy a child a toy when you could buy them something with the potential to create 1,000 toys, allowing them to use their imagination and create something unique? Developers in all age ranges have used this device to create music players, gaming consoles and remote-controlled cars, among other things. The learning experience, alongside the entertainment value of the device, will only help children grow in a world of automation and software development. I congratulate the six founders of this charity, who not only are helping the next generation of entrepreneurs grow but have been successful UK entrepreneurs themselves, including, of course, the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox. The recent announcement that they have sold 8 million devices, making Raspberry Pi the bestselling personal computer in the UK ever, is truly astonishing. Through efforts such as this, I am confident that the UK will be able to maintain and enhance its position as a place of entrepreneurship and technology, and drive its economic and financial prosperity into the future.
In conclusion, will my noble friend the Minister confirm that the Government will continue to support entrepreneurs, especially the aspiring young entrepreneurs I spoke about, in their quest to drive our economy forward and increase the financial prosperity of the UK?