Confederation of British Industry (CBI) President Rain Newton-Smith delivers the keynote address to the group’s annual conference.

After thanking the event organizers, she said: “We have a brilliantly busy schedule – with hopefully no Peppa Pig in sight.”

This is a reference to Boris Johnson’s CBI speech in 2021, when he lost his place in his script and went off on a tangent about a trip he took over the weekend to a Peppa Pig World theme park in Hampshire (more about it here).

On more substantive issues, Ms Newton-Smith told the assembled business leaders that they and the country are “on a shore, and in the distance there is an island – a vision of growth”.

The government’s growth vision has been “defined with strength and determination”, she says, but she says only business can “transform this vision into reality”.

Goodbye instability, but not quite hello growth

She goes on to say that the last few years have been “difficult”, with businesses “crying out for stability, optimism and the ability to think long-term again”.

Ms Newton-Smith praises the Chancellor for ensuring stability in public finances and changing budgetary rules to allow more capital spending.

She notes that there is continued uncertainty abroad, pointing to wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, the “specter of growing protectionism” and “sabre-rattling from across the Atlantic.”

“While things remain uncertain abroad, this government has put us in a strong position by drawing the curtain on a decade of domestic instability,” she says.

But growth remains “still far away” because “stability is a precondition and not a model of growth”.

‘Never again’

The question for businesses is whether they can afford to invest and grow, and “after the budget, the answer we are hearing from so many businesses is not yet”.

She points to the increase in employers’ national insurance which “caught us all off guard”, the increase in the national living wage and “the potential cost of the Work Rights Bill” – all of which “put pressure on a heavy burden on businesses. .

Businesses are now “containing the crisis”, she says, and also highlights the impact of changes to inheritance tax for farmers.

“Such tax increases must never again be applied only to businesses,” says Ms Newton-Smith. “This is the path that leads to unintended consequences.”

She calls on the government to work to get people back to work and increase productivity, but notes that “the budget has simply made it more difficult for our businesses to take risks on people.”