Autumn Budget: Reeves must focus on growth, not ‘gimmicks’
Ahead of the Autumn Budget, City Reporter Samuel Norman sits down with top industry names for a Budget Briefing. This week, the chief executive of founders club Helm calls for bold innovation policies took take centre stage.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves should use her second Autumn Budget to make bolder swings for the UK’s innovation economy and drive international competitiveness, the boss of a business founders club has urged.
The Chancellor has been told to avoid gimmick policies and go further in her support for start-ups and innovative companies.
Andreas Adamides, the chief executive of founders-only club Helm, told Morning Wire: “The Budget doesn’t need a headline gimmick – just a few bold moves that make growth the rational choice again.”
The Aussie-Cypriot entrepreneur took the reins at Helm, formerly known as the Supper Club, in 2022 as part of its pandemic comeback. The group was founded by Duncan Cheatle in 2003 and serves to support high-growth scaling firms.
In order to achieve “long-term competitiveness,” Adamides said support for innovation and skills must be top of the agenda when Reeves takes to the dispatch box on 26 November.
He added the Budget must lay concrete foundations for growth plans ahead to avoid “policy whiplash” that “kills confidence faster than any tax rise”.
“Scaleups plan on certainty – change the rules mid-cycle and you strangle the very firms creating jobs and exports”.
Avoid taxes that ‘starve’ talent
As a starting point, Adamides said Reeves must not repeat the mistakes of her maiden Budget, which dampened business confidence.
“Avoid National Insurance hikes that punish hiring and any visa tightening that starves talent.”
Reeves hiked employer’s National Insurance contributions 1.2 per cent last year and lowered the threshold for paying the tax to £5,000 from £9,100.
Helm sounded the alarm on cost pressures in the fallout of the 2024 Budget, with six in ten founders saying they planned to “hold off on hiring additional staff due to the employers NI increase.”
But Adamides said a bold move to “cut employer’s National Insurance on new hires” could help boost the hiring market and accelerate the growing rate of scale-ups.
He pointed to the stamp duty on shares as another tax burden hampering the UK’s global status.
“A 0.5 per cent friction on every UK share trade is a competitive tax,” Adamides said.
It comes amid growing hopes Reeves will help accelerate the London market’s IPO revival with reforms to the stamp duty regime.
The Chancellor is reported to be weighing a holiday on the shares levy for newly listed companies, effectively removing the tax for the first two to three years after a float.
Adamides called for an exemption for new listings in a bid to “boot liquidity and valuations” but called for Reeves to go further and “modernise the regime for good”.
Innovation beyond AI
He added a more simple and predictable approach to research and development (R&D) credits would help cover founders’ access to capital woes.
As part of the Spending Review, Reeves unveiled a four-year £86bn R&D budget described as a “bumper funding package”.
Reeves shielded R&D from any spending cuts, as she called Britain “the home of science and technology” and framed the package around plans to “turbocharge” science and tech.
The move coincided with Prime Minister Keir Starmer pledging to boost Britain’s AI infrastructure and make the country an “AI maker, not an AI taker”.
But Adamides said if the government was to boost the innovation economy, it would have to look wider than just AI.
Adamides said: “I found it a little bit odd that there aren’t wide appeal wins, there should be ways to support all innovation.”
He added the £86bn funding package would help drive global competition, but urged the government not to neglect other sectors.
“I think we need to choose more sectors than [life and sciences] that we can compete in globally.
“We’re in a strong position and we have some of the world’s best universities and a lot of talent here. If we support those areas, we will have a higher chance of success in competing globally.”
The entrepreneur said “anything that R&D is working on is going to make us more globally competitive and it’s going to spark growth”.
He added doubling down on widespread innovation and avoiding being “so selectful” would ramp up Britain’s fight on the global stage.
Fresh data from HSBC’s fintech arm this week showed “renewed confidence” in the UK’s innovation economy with an uptick in funding.
The venture capital appetite for UK’s start ups and scale ups hit $9bn (£6.75bn) in venture in the third quarter, teeing 2025’s year-to-date investment up to match last year’s full-year total of $17.3bn.