Policy Update

It’s been another busy and eventful time for the Policy team at the Chamber over the last few months. With some Covid restrictions still lingering, and the impacts of Brexit being felt by us all, our policy makers and politicians have certainly been keeping us on our toes of late. Not to mention of course the impact that recent devastating events in Ukraine have had on us all.

We are also very alive to one of the key issues facing our members and the wider business community at the moment – the ever escalating cost of doing business. Ahead of the Chancellor’s Spring Statement in March, alongside British Chambers of Commerce, we called on UK Government to commit to a five-point plan to help tackle the issue, specifically:

Delay the impending National Insurance rise by one year to give firms muchneeded financial headroom to weather this unprecedented surge in costs facing businesses and power the recovery.

A temporary energy price cap for small businesses to protect smaller firms from some of the price increases they would otherwise face, offering the same protection as households.

Additional financial support, through: - the expansion of the energy bills rebate scheme for households to also include small firms and energy intensive businesses. - a new support fund, administered by Ofgem, to support the smallest firms with their soaring energy bills. - a six-month extension to the Recovery Loan Scheme, leaving it in place until the end of 2022.

A moratorium, for the life of this parliament, on all policy measures that increase business costs, including no new business taxes or added regulatory burdens, but excluding only evidence-based changes to the National Living Wage.

A commitment from the Government’s Supply Chain Advisory Group and Industry Taskforce to continue to work with industry to urgently deliver practical solutions to ease the supply chain disruption and labour shortages that continue to drive the upward pressure on prices.

Clearly, we feel the Chancellor absolutely did not go far enough in the measures he announced to try to support business through yet another challenging period, and we will continue to push our messages to government at all levels to use all of the policy levers at their disposal to help ease the current burden on businesses and protect our fragile economic recovery. A little closer to home, we have also been engaged recently on a number of city level issues such as City Plan 2030, the Living Wage Place, Short Term Lets legislation, the city’s Just Economic Transition, the recovery of the visitor economy through our membership of the Edinburgh Tourism Action Group (ETAG), our involvement with Everyone’s Edinburgh and the Business for Good programme, and engagement with prospective electoral candidates ahead of the upcoming local elections on May 5th. In January, we also held the first in our new series of Cross Parliamentary Economic Briefings where we invited all local councilors and constituency MPs and MSPs to hear the experiences of our members and the wider business community directly from our Chief Executive. Over 40 elected members attended the session, and we had an interesting and insightful discussion on a range of issues – this is a dialogue will be continuing on a quarterly basis.

As ever if you’d like to discuss these or any other issues, please contact the Policy Team at policy@edinburghchamber.co.uk