| Updated:
We should be making it easier for entrepreneurs to invest, employ and expand. Instead Labour has given them more reasons to look elsewhere, writes John Caudwell
I have spent most of my life building businesses in Britain and have argued for years that Britain will only grow if government understands what motivates the people who create jobs.
That is why I back the Stop the Creep campaign, led by scale-up founders’ network Helm, which is calling on the new Chancellor to stop and reverse the tax rises piling up on people who build businesses.
I backed Labour at the 2024 election because, in my view, it was the only viable option at the time. I have never been tribal about politics and believe constructive engagement can shape better decisions. I support policies rather than parties, and Labour’s pro-business promises that persuaded me at the time have sadly not been turned into pro-business actions.
Britain cannot tax its entrepreneurs into staying
Look at Business Asset Disposal Relief. It exists to reward somebody who has spent years building a company and finally sells it. It was charged at 10 per cent until April 2025, 14 per cent after that and has sat at 18 per cent since April.
At the same time, Employers’ National Insurance has risen, Capital Gains Tax has risen, and the reliefs covering business and agricultural property have both been narrowed. Each of these may be defensible on its own terms, but nobody appears to have modelled what they do together.
These changes are landing on an economy with little capacity to absorb them, with inflation back up to 2.9 per cent, unemployment at 4.9 per cent and rising, and more than 53,000 British companies in critical financial distress in the second quarter of this year. (Another 675,000 more are in significant distress.)
Behind every one of these businesses is somebody who took a risk and employees whose livelihoods depend on that business surviving and growing.
We should be making it easier for those people to invest, employ and expand. Instead we are giving them more reasons to look elsewhere.
Other countries are only too happy to give them somewhere to go.
An American founder selling a qualifying business now pays nothing on the first $15m. The UAE, Spain, Singapore, Monaco and Italy all offer terms any British owner approaching an exit will stop to look at.
The important point here is that these are not countries following the same ideological playbook. For example, the UAE is a low-tax, sovereign controlled state. Spain is a left-wing European democracy with a very different approach to government and public spending. Singapore has its own highly interventionist, pro-business model.
These countries have all reached broadly the same conclusion; if you want entrepreneurs to build, invest and create jobs in your country, you have to make it attractive for them to do so.
The wealth exodus
Analysis of Companies House filings for Rathbones find that nearly 6,000 business owners left the UK in the two years to January 2026, technology founders the largest group among them. Each took jobs, investment and future tax receipts with them.
The three things I asked of government when I started out were predictability, fair taxation and a system that rewarded hard work. Britain gave me all three, and I built a company that employed more than 10,000 people here. That is all the 150 plus business leaders and parliamentarians backing this campaign want.
In practical terms that means reversing the increase in employers’ National Insurance, returning the entrepreneurial reliefs to where they were and providing long-term clarity on business taxation that leaders can plan against. Give founders that, and the investment decisions currently on hold will start moving again.
There is more the Treasury could do before looking again at founders, because any businessperson knows you cannot fix a shortfall by raising prices every year. You improve efficiency and strip out waste.
A single per cent off public spending through better accountability and modern technology would save around £12bn, and I would much rather see that first.
A bigger opportunity is being missed too, because Britain should be running a serious inward investment operation, identifying global companies that could bring jobs, technology and intellectual property here and negotiating hard to win them. It astonishes me that no government has tried it, especially when I have been campaigning for that very solution for many years.
Andy Burnham says he wants to be pro-business and I take him at his word. I want this government to succeed, and so do the founders who back this campaign, as for the benefit of the general population, we need to deliver growth.
The Budget on 28 October is the moment to show that. Get it right and the founders now weighing up their options will build their next companies here. Get it wrong and they will build them abroad, leaving Britain with fewer companies, weaker growth and fewer jobs in every part of the country.
John Caudwell is a British entrepreneur, philanthropist and founder of Phones 4u
