FSB sweet talk the Lib-Dems

The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) will give the Liberal Democrat Party Conference a taste of life in a small firm this week to highlight the importance of small businesses in tackling unemployment.

Conference delegates will have the chance to win a tin of jelly babies at the FSB’s exhibition stand in the Bournemouth International Centre, by completing a ‘Big Small Biz Quiz’ on the importance of small businesses – the country’s big employers.

The FSB is calling for more support for small firms to increase their average workforce from four to six employees, and is illustrating this with a tin of six jelly babies at its stand which is in the form of an employment centre in the exhibition hall.

Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor Vince Cable will also be speaking at an FSB fringe event titled Small Businesses: The Job Creators … Economic Drivers, which will present ideas to help small firms recruit and retain staff.

The FSB will be issuing a new report at the conference, entitled Small Businesses, Big Employers, which calls for:

• Reform of Job Centre Plus by linking it with Business Link and skills boards to provide a better focus on business needs;

• Creation of quality apprenticeships without the administrative burden these create for small businesses;

• Support for more graduate internships to be set up in small businesses;

• An Enterprise Allowance Scheme to help the unemployed go into self employment;

• A Short -Time Working subsidy to help businesses train staff to get them ready for the upturn and to protect existing jobs; and

• A two year moratorium on business regulation to help the economy recover and let business owners concentrate on survival.

John Wright, National Chairman, Federation of Small Businesses, said:

“With unemployment at a 14-year high and job vacancies at an all-time low, urgent action is needed to avoid a social and economic slump, and small businesses hold the key to reversing this alarming trend.

“Small businesses employ over half the private sector workforce and despite the recession we have found that 57 per cent would like to take on staff in the future if they were given the support they need to do so. This would create 800,000 new jobs and would really go some way to tackling unemployment.

“Our proposals will help make it easier for small businesses to recruit, retain and train their staff and play their part in stimulating economic recovery.”

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