Think Small
Think Small
A BLUEPRINT FOR SUPPORTING UK SMALL BUSINESSES
BY NICK KING
About the Author
Nick King is Head of Business at the Centre for Policy Studies, a role he combines with independent consultancy work within his own small business, Henham Strategy. Nick was a Special Adviser in Government between 2012 and 2018, working for two Secretaries of State in three different Departments including the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills. Before entering politics, Nick primarily worked in the private sector, particularly in the sports industry and the wider leisure sector, both in the UK and abroad.
About the Centre for Policy Studies
The Centre for Policy Studies is the home of a new generation of conservative thinking. Its mission is to develop policies that widen enterprise, ownership and opportunity, with a particular focus on its core priorities of housing, tax, business and welfare.Founded in 1974 by Sir Keith Joseph and Margaret Thatcher, the CPS is primarily responsible for developing a host of successful policies, including the raising of the personal allowance, the Enterprise Allowance, the ISA, transferable pensions, synthetic phonics, free ports and the bulk of the Thatcher reform agenda.
Acknowledgements
We spoke to too many business owners, representative bodies, politicians, diplomats, think tanks and other interested parties to thank each of them individually but we are grateful to them all for their interest in and help with this project. We are particularly grateful to Capital Economics for the modelling work behind our central recommendation and to YouGov for the polling work they have conducted on our behalf. We would like to put on record our thanks to all those who came to our roundtables and specifically to the Federation of Small Businesses, the Office of Tax Simplification and to ministers, special advisers and civil servants in various Departments for their help throughout the preparation of this report. The author would like to give particular thanks to Robert Colvile for his editorial expertise as well as to the rest of the CPS policy team for their invaluable assistance.