CBI Denies Govt Pressure On Scotland Vote

By Ian King, Business Presenter

The president of the Confederation of British Industry has insisted no pressure has been exerted on businesses by the Government to speak out on the Scottish referendum debate.

The last week has seen numerous interventions from business leaders in the oil, retail and telecoms sectors warning of the consequences of a Yes vote.

Many in 'Yes Scotland' suspect the involvement of the Prime Minister, particularly since he hosted a reception at 10 Downing Street last week for business leaders, during which he urged them to speak out.

But Sir Mike Rake, who is chairman of BT Group and deputy chairman of Barclays, insisted business leaders were speaking out of their own volition and not party to a scaremongering campaign.

He told Sky News: "What you've seen is a spontaneous outburst of real and genuine concern by companies large, medium and small, across both sides of the border as to what this might mean.

Alex Salmond has accused David Cameron of scaremongering

"You've seen industry groups coming together, really concerned that we seem to have failed to get in front of the Scottish people enough of the economic facts and risks, really, and uncertainties that will exist if there was to be a Yes vote.

"Scotland, of course, would survive - but we're talking a significant period of real uncertainty, a real threat to the recovery that we've got going, before we've been able to deliver the benefits of that recovery to the majority of people."

Sir Mike insisted that, despite the strong number of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Scotland publicly backing the Yes campaign, there was also strong support among small businesses for staying in the United Kingdom.

He added: "The vast majority of businesses right across the United Kingdom want Scotland to stay within the UK.

"Why? Because we have a union of 62 million people, one currency, one set of rules, one set of business principles and I think it makes eminent sense to the business community that we should remain together as part of a reformed European Union.

"Some very small companies obviously have a different positioning, they might well have a different view about independence, they may feel that this will have less impact on them if they are in local trade than if they were to be a larger company with cross-border trade.

"All I would say to them is that there are indirect risks to investment, uncertainty for the Scottish economy, that could impact them - and indeed the Federation for Small Businesses came up this morning with a review that shows that actually a large number of SMEs in Scotland are increasingly concerned about the impact, the uncertainty and the potential increase in costs that could impact them both as citizens and as businesses."

Sir Mike said he was unconvinced by some of the pro-business policies, such as a cut in corporation tax, that the Scottish government has promised in the event of a Yes vote.

He said this included a cut in Air Passenger Duty – a policy that has been welcomed by Willie Walsh, chief executive of International Airlines Group, the owner of British Airways.

He went on: "That's a very specific factor that would benefit the airline industry [but] of itself does not, I'm afraid, make for a stable growing economy.

"The fact is that right across the UK, including in Scotland, we are growing now and that's healthy, but we need to make sure that we continue to grow and it would be particularly unfortunate to impact that growth with the inevitable uncertainty that a Yes vote would create.

"I don't actually think that's the right answer and I think one of the biggest problems for business is that we have very little clarity on what the policies would be."

Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang

CBI Denies Govt Pressure On Scotland Vote

Dengan url

http://clotehancamar.blogspot.com/2014/09/cbi-denies-govt-pressure-on-scotland.html

Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya

CBI Denies Govt Pressure On Scotland Vote

namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link

CBI Denies Govt Pressure On Scotland Vote

sebagai sumbernya