Last Wednesday saw the Lords debate Budget 2016, George Osborne’s last before the upcoming EU referendum. Lord Bilimoria welcomed the business friendly measures that the Government introduced, such as the expansion of business rates relief and the sustained reduction in Corporation tax, but he lamented the impact of the Chancellor’s proposals on the UK’s increasingly complex taxation system and condemned the poorly thought out plans to cut Personal Independence Payments.
Yesterday, Lord Bilimoria spoke about the government’s planned proposals to increase productivity in the UK in a debate in the House of Lords. Titled: Fixing the foundations: Creating a more prosperous nation, the government’s productivity plan stressed the need for Britain to boost productivity and advocated a series of reforms designed to bolster long term investment and create a more dynamic economy. Speaking in the debate, Lord Bilimoria welcomed plans to make the UK more attractive to inward investment but lamented the lack of action that the government has taken on funding for research and development. He also quizzed the Minister, Lord O’Neill of Gatley, about the level of support that the government is providing to quickly growing businesses to scale up their operations.
Lord Bilimoria, Chancellor of the University of Birmingham, recently spoke about the need to invest in higher education in the UK in an article for the Telegraph. He stressed the discrepancy in funding received by US universities, compared to their UK counterparts, and argued that the neglect of Britain’s universities has contributed to the productivity gap currently facing the UK.
Lord Bilimoria recently shared his thoughts about the aftermath of the 2015 General Election and a reluctance to celebrate British achievements in an article published in the Telegraph. In the feature he hailed the stable business conditions created by the election result and argued for the new wholly Conservative government to take decisive action to tackle the decline in the UK’s productivity, while continuing to reduce the nation’s deficit.