CBI @10am: Making the UK a trading powerhouse

Speakers

• Lord Karan Bilimoria CBD DL, President, CBI
• Amanda Tickel, Partner, Head of Tax and Trade Policy, Deloitte LLP
• Toni Miszewski, Managing Director, Antech
• Ceri Thomas, Editor and Partner, Tortoise Media (Chair)

In this session

Lord Bilimoria:

• In May, we were expected a ‘V’ shaped recovery but since then, we’ve had fuel shortages, labour shortages across all sectors, inflation, and energy price rises. Currently, our recovery is a little fragile and there is uncertainty especially with the raises in corporation taxes and National Insurance. On the positive side - vaccines are working, booster roll-out underway alongside flu jabs.
• Want to work closely with the government to ensure a sustained recovery, like we have throughout coronavirus.
• On trade: UK has always been a great trading nation – we’re the second largest exporter of services in the world but do have to adjust to new place in the world. Individual countries within the EU are still among some of our top trading partners.
• Global investment summit took place yesterday, so this is clearly high on the government’s agenda.
• But need more government incentives and action, for example, by providing export loans and support to businesses, and activating the shortage occupation list quicker in response to labour shortages.
• Opportunities from new trade agreements: the CBI is working with HCs and ambassadors of countries to help get new deals over the line. America is not realistically likely in the short-term, but potential opportunities from Australia which took 365 days to negotiate and includes movement of people, goods and services. Including people aged 18-35 can go and live in either country for 3 years with no restrictions.

Amanda Tickel:

• Scorecard following end of EU/UK - TCA agreement - it's not just about past ten months but also all the preparation business did before the end of the transition period too. Businesses have adapted in the goods sectors well. Seeing UK export levels back into EU back to where they were pre-pandemic.
• Imports from the EU remain subdued however, unclear whether this is due to the pandemic or terms of the TCA or businesses deciding UK market it too complicated to supply into. Lots of re-structing has taken place.
• On the services sector – there are still issues around the movement of people e.g., sending staff into other countries to deliver services which remain quite complicated.
• Businesses are very positive about skilled worker permits.  Financial services sector seems strong in the UK - more to be seen in terms of restructuring.

Toni Miszewski:

• Antech are a high-tech engineering company based in Southwest based and have been in business for 30 years.
• In that time have never shipped less than 70% of goods overseas - usually manufacture kit to order but also started selling services overseas – in the past ten years we’ve been selling services overseas too, involving people and equipment and a step up in complexity.
• Our interaction with government has been on a practical level. Have a team in Russia who have 60% of their travel expenses paid and can go to trade advisers in the consulates which gives you confidence to go into new countries.
• Export guarantee scheme doesn’t help us at all – must go through the banks who have to set up their own rules and accessing that for us has been difficult. Feels more like ‘you’re on your own’.