Member

There is a good reason to focus on smaller enterprises, even though these changes impact all sizes of business—mainly because smaller businesses find it so much tougher to cope with additional costs, because they have far fewer options. Having a smaller workforce, of, say, 12 to 15 employees, makes it hard to implement changes involving staff cost savings without impacting operational effectiveness. We know the category of these businesses with fewer employees is where we find start-ups, which we hope will eventually get themselves through to scaling up, because that is what we require for growth to come through to the economy. If we are harming these businesses at the beginning of their lives, that will have a knock-on effect on the growth of the UK.