Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, Britain's Got Talent right across this great land we have many clever people innovating and working hard.
As a member of the Business and Trade Committee, I have been in places as far apart as Exeter and Glasgow, talking with people who make everything from satellites to sausage rolls. The mood, however, is not good. The strivers are still striving, straining every sinew to deliver success. But confidence is not so much on the floor as deep in the cellars below.
In my constituency of Dumfries and Galloway, I spoke with a family firm of bakers who had modest expansion plans, two or three extra staff drawn from the ranks of youngsters who might struggle to find that all important first job. Those plans are parked. Those youngsters, for all I know, are on the dole.
Similarly, the Usual Place, a charity in Dumfries, which provides wonderful opportunities for youngsters in catering, is making cutbacks. 6 people will lose their jobs as the reality of the anti-business agenda, designed at 11 Downing St, bites.
When we in Government proposed raising National Insurance to fund the NHS, one Labour backbencher denounced it as 'the worst possible tax rise.' Now that same politician is Chancellor and the tune has changed. And spare us the claim that Labour's manifesto pledge on National Insurance covered only that paid directly by employees.
Sophistry, sheer sophistry.
Mr Speaker, we lack not for start-ups in Britain, but we struggle for scale-ups, the firms that expand and grow. Family businesses are often among the front rank of successful scale-ups as their multi-generational nature and the investment, literal and metaphorical, of senior figures imbues a stability.
The Prime Minister talks a good game, but talk is cheap and his actions have expensive consequences. He said he and his Chancellor made clear to Cabinet colleagues that in each of their briefs, 'growth is the number one mission.' Well, Madam Deputy Speaker, the Deputy Prime Minister didn't hear - perhaps her rave music was too loud.
For how is growth compatible with her Employment Rights Bill, which the Government's own analysis says will cost businesses up to £5 billion a year?
5 billion when grandparents are in tears as family farms face being split up.
5 billion when families that have been in business for decades look at their bottom line and despair.
And the worst aspect of this Bill is the premise that all trade union organisers are saints and all business owners robber barons intent on exploiting the workers. The unions are restive.
The Secretary of State for Scotland would not attend a reception in his own magnificent Dover House because of a picket line and how ironic that the meeting was with the Scottish CBI. Now those same strikers are forced the cancellation of a Scotland Office event with National Air Traffic Services.
I've said before, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I make no apology for saying it again: Unions going to party like it's 1979.
The Party opposite sees business as a dripping roast to be devoured, taxed to a standstill, and not much mischief if it fails. They perceive a nobility in the public sector which they see when they see only avarice in the private.
They're as wrong about that as they are about profit being a dirty word. The drivers of growth are in the private sector. They deserve our admiration and, more importantly, our support.
What can Government do for them? How about getting out of the way? How about less legislation; not more? How about less petty regulation and more can-do attitude? Lighten the tax load; not add to it.
Labour needs to step away from its anti-business policies so that firms in every part of the country can step up with wealth creation with the private sector leading the charge.