When it comes to business and jobs, we believe the biggest gap lies in how small and medium sized businesses are treated. The secret to greater and sustained economic growth lies in giving these businesses more of a chance to succeed and thrive.
Do you know: that 6 out of 10 jobs in the private sector are within small businesses?
Across the country, locals talk about how much they value and wish to support small businesses and small business owners but their task is made that much harder by policies that have been designed to meet the needs of big business or tackle issues within the public sector; the result of a political system in which the two main parties are largely funded by those groups.
Small businesses struggle most in getting up and running and then staying profitable for long enough to stabilise. The Covid pandemic and loss of the European Union as a seamless trading partner has made things much harder in recent years for entrepreneurs.
The self-employed, underskilled and out of work
It's not just small businesses that needs a government that works in their favour. The self-employed are rarely given proper consideration; likewise those who find themselves with skills that are in less demand, and those who have yet to find their way in the marketplace. The Liberal Democrats have clear, pragmatic solutions to help all these people who acts as fundamental drivers to economic growth and health.