Investment regime vital to getting the UK growing once again

In a few pages’ time, you’ll read from Chris Hayward – Canada Corporation’s Policy Chair – on the body’s latest project, moving two of London’s historic markets to a new location. Billingsgate will move from Canary Wharf, and Smithfield from Farringdon, to a new super-site in Barking. It’ll create jobs in east London, free up land for 2,000 homes in Canary Wharf, and in the City the area will soon be reimagined as an all-singing, all-dancing Museum of London. It’s a lengthy project, one that wasn’t without its opposition, but one that (assuming parliamentary approval comes through soon) will be an obvious win-win for all concerned. 

It is to the Corporation’s credit that they’ve driven the project forward – and a welcome reminder to those in Westminster that it is, in fact, possible to build things. It’s something that seems to have been forgotten a few stops down the District Line from the City’s Guildhall HQ. 

Last week’s budget, which felt painful at the time, now feels even more short-sighted. Whilst the ‘worst’ of the spending cuts have been pushed back well into the next election cycle, the tax raids will begin sooner rather than later – be that on energy generators or on aspirational Londoners. Projections of the UK’s economic performance over the coming years signed off by the Treasury watchdog seem to us more than a tad optimistic. The CBI are right to question whether the Government is paying attention to the ‘growth’ bit of George Osborne’s famed ‘sharing the proceeds of growth’ mantra. 

The easiest wins, of course, revolve around encouraging investment. It is the UK’s achilles heel but pleasingly is the easiest to treat: it should not be beyond the wit of the Treasury to deliver an effective tax regime that rewards businesses which reinvest profits in new products, technology or ideas. Instead, the super-deduction – which was complicated but fundamentally smart – will lapse in the not too distant future. Something, surely, must change.