Boris Johnson must back business to rebuild Britain – Yorkshire Post Letters

BUSINESS will be heartened to hear the Prime Minister’s vision and belief in the private sector to create jobs, find innovative solutions to the challenges facing our society and fund high quality public services (The Yorkshire Post, October 7). They also fully back his ambition to build back better, fairer and greener.

Commitments to new port infrastructure, offshore wind and lifelong reskilling are particularly welcome. Private investment will flow if matched by the right long-term incentives and regulatory framework.

The challenge now is to build a bridge from today’s crisis to the Prime Minister’s future vision. Too many firms are overwhelmed by the enormity of the Covid impact on their cashflow and confidence.

Government can act today to show a clear and consistent rationale on restrictions; delivering targeted help as the virus’s impact evolves, and ramping up mass testing for the critical months ahead.

And there’s no avoiding the importance of delivering a new trade agreement with the EU for our economy.

From: Mark Littlewood, Director General, Institute of Economic Affairs.

THERE was some sound free market rhetoric in the Prime Minister’s speech, but little in the way of concrete free market policy. Faced with the prospect of millions of job losses, the Government needs to commit to reducing the tax burden, cutting red tape for businesses, and reducing the cost of employment. To compare wind power in this country to Saudi Arabia’s oil wealth is fantasy. The value of the UK wind industry is about £7.5bn a year; the Saudi petroleum sector is worth roughly £223bn a year.

While 60,000 jobs would certainly be welcome, the Prime Minister is not best placed to predict what the future of energy is going to look like.

He has in his mind an arbitrary target the nation is going to reach, but this is not the way to sensibly run the energy industry. Investing £160m of public money into wind power is far from encouraging.

From: Aled Jones, Southcliffe Road, Bridlington.

WE live in a society where pizza delivery is faster than an ambulance, and where losing a phone is scarier than being buried alive. Is this the society our ancestors fought two world wars for? I sincerely hope not.

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James Mitchinson