Ed Miliband outlines plan to boost UK small business

Labour leader Ed Miliband’s outline of plans to boost small businesses gains backing of Lord Mandelson.

The leader of the UK’s Labour party, Ed Miliband, laid out his party’s plans on Monday to boost productivity in the UK, in a speech at a Jaguar Land Rover plant in Wolverhampton. Mr Miliband pledged to encourage growth through a series of boosts aimed at small businesses, while promoting better training and higher wages.

“We need a better plan to replace an economy where tens of billions are lost in tax avoidance with an economy where tens of thousands more of our young people get apprenticeships,” Miliband said. “We need a better plan to help hundreds more businesses grow, succeed and create wealth.”

It’s pro-business but not business as usual

In the speech, Mr Miliband said the plan aims to boost business productivity by creating a working environment of “inclusive” property, instead of the tax-and-spend model that is currently in operation - the plan is “pro-business but not business as usual”, he said.

Furthermore, the Labour party leader said they will cut and freeze business rates while improving access to finance for small businesses to ensure future jobs will come from many small firms, rather than a few larger ones.

Mr Miliband expounded about a fairer tax system, keeping corporation tax low for large businesses but “also cutting and freezing business rates for smaller ones”, while creating a “British Investment Bank” to help small business grow. To help them succeed, he said Labour would open a new “Small Business Administration to coordinate work across government”.

Lord Mandelson backs Miliband’s plan

Labour’s plan is said to be based upon that of the US president’s campaign to grow the economy and has received the backing of the former business secretary, Lord Peter Mandelson, who offered his support in a Guardian article.

“The Plan for Britain’s Prosperity that Labour is publishing shows that these two elements are part of a bigger whole, the aim of which is not only to ensure a fairer distribution of wealth, but significantly to expand the productive potential of the British economy,” Lord Mandelson wrote in his Guardian article.