For small businesses, elections are never much fun because they cause uncertainty, and that usually leads to delayed decisions as people wait to see what happens next.
It can be hard to plan ahead when you are not sure what is going to happen to minimum wage legislation, or the UK’s involvement in Europe, for example.
The main televised election debate between all seven main parties should have provided a level of clarity on the main topics, but whilst clearly business was discussed SMEs weren’t which given that they make up over 90 per cent of the UK business and employment sector this was a little surprising.
There are four key areas of interest to SMEs that should have taken centre stage as both the larger and smaller parties seem to recognise the importance of small to medium enterprises to the UK economy, and their role in creating jobs and wealth, and so look likely to put SME needs at the heart of their manifestos.
It wasn’t just us that spotted it as Lee Perkins, European Vice President and Managing Director at Sage UK said: “It is astonishing that yet again no party leader mentioned what they would do for small businesses. As the economy continues to bounce back, over half of our customers told us that the business policies of the main political parties are likely to sway their vote. Party leaders should heed our advice and appeal to small business if they hope to get the keys to Number 10.”
However there wasn’t nothing spoken about SMEs which given the fact the over 500,000 have been created each year for the past three years could be viewed as odd by those who tuned in.
