The new tax year brought with it a fresh wave of costs for business, from higher wage bills and changes to business rates to higher employer National Insurance contributions. Whatever ministers say, that is not the start of a more pro-growth climate. It is a further squeeze on the real economy.

What has been missing from the debate for too long is a confident and openly pro-enterprise voice, one willing to say plainly that growth will not come from slogans or from placing extra burdens on the very businesses expected to create jobs, invest and expand.

A large part of the reason Prosper UK was set up was to be that voice. Labour says growth is its central mission, but too often it governs as though growth can be delivered through empty rhetoric while continually making it harder to do business.

There are two prevailing assumptions in politics that Prosper UK exists to challenge. The first is that policy can be developed in isolation by groups and individuals without real experience of what it means to run a business. The second is that the thinking needed to deliver growth and get the country moving again can be developed in Westminster alone.

Read the full article here: https://conservativehome.com/2026/04/15/andy-street-growth-will-not-come-from-noise-slogans-or-placing-burdens-on-businesses/