Liam Fox misquoted ‘British businesses are lazy’ debunked

I recently had the pleasure of attending the Conservative Way Forward summer drinks event, where I met Liam Fox MP, alongside fellow Made in the Midlands members, Frank Dudley Limited and Ron Thompson Machinery Co. Ltd.

As a remain voter and BREXIT skeptic, I was not expecting such an impressive and truthful speech to be delivered by Fox.

Media misreporting Unexpectedly, when I turned on my television over the weekend, I was astonished to see how Fox’s speech had been misquoted and placed in an entirely different context. The reports suggested that Fox was having a go at British businesses. I can tell you that if that happened, nobody in the room picked up on it.

However, what Fox said was hard hitting, so for the first time of listening to a Conservative Minister, I actually heard a string of common sense acknowledgements. Before this event, I was very concerned that the BREXIT campaign delivered by Fox and Boris could end up as a farce. I am now much more confident that this team can deliver.

What did Fox actually say? Fox was dramatically headlined in the media as saying: ‘British businesses are lazy and spend too much time on the golf course.’ However, this is not what was said. I will instead quote from memory, so that you can interpret his speech in a broader context.

“For too long, the UK has only focused on inward investment and making short term gains. In preference to creating a balance between UK business investments overseas and exporting.”

Fox simply explained, that when we sell off our big businesses, or major companies invest in the UK, you often have immediate job growth. However, this investment eventually ends up being repaid to the parent companies in other countries, via a variety of means including management fees. Most politicians are not business people, so they only see headline jobs created or how it affects them until the next election. The Hinkley power plant is a great example of this.

Britain needs to do more post-BREXIT Fox highlighted the fact that only 11% of British businesses export and we needed to get that figure up. Fox said: “Business needs to play its part and we need to view export as not just a nice thing to do, but our duty. We are a free trading nation and we want to create new ways of approaching international trade that can inspire others around the world.”

Fox said ‘we’ had become complacent on past successes and now was an important time for businesses to play their part, which is a statement that I agree with. This was an example of a left-wing journalist attempting to create a conflict when there should be none. Fox asked for the support of UK business, he did not attack businesses, and this was an example of deliberate misreporting to create a hook for a news story.

The media plays such a pivotal role in providing the public with accurate information, in turn we must verify these stories more carefully.

Business role in international development Although the reporting was shockingly inaccurate, the question “are Britain’s businesses too complacent?” is actually quite an interesting one, which I would like to address in this blog.

Firstly, let me say that the 11% of UK businesses that do export are doing a fantastic job. There are also many other domestic or lifestyle businesses where exporting does not apply. I really believe that this question is a call to those companies that do have the capabilities and quality to export, but don’t. There are certainly more of those businesses than you may think.

Furthermore, ask yourself: ‘How many UK business websites do you see, even those that trade internationally, that actually translate their website into multiple languages?’

Here is another question: ‘Does the UK government really do enough to help businesses export to new markets?’

In addition to squeezing the pips from the reluctant ‘would be’ exporters, it is also important to acknowledge that for us to be a major exporter, we would need British owned and globally trading OEM’s that are headquartered in the UK. If you are too far down the supply chain then your products often only have a domestic market. On the other hand, if you are an OEM, global tier 1 supplier, a software company or do something unique, then you have the riches of a globally connected economy to sell to.

The simple answer is that we need more companies here who are further up the supply chain or better still, OEM’s. We also need inventors and innovative engineers with more time for R&D. The UK likes to believe that we are advanced in this area, but we really aren’t. If we are discussing SME’s or aspiring businesses, then they certainly do not have the time or resources to do huge amounts of R&D, also there is not sufficient funding in place for blue sky projects.

We need people asking groundbreaking questions, for example: How about an engineer in the West Midlands developing a project to mine an asteroid, creating a British spaceport, or something else spectacular? This is where the government can play a major part. It is easy for UK businesses to get funding on projects that they already have a track record in, but new technologies are simply out of reach for small businesses and that is where we can create the most impact.

Thought leadership My message to Fox is simple, we need to back the growth of businesses here in the UK that can create wealth. We can do this by creating better funding for innovative ideas, scale up R&D incentives, but don’t make them overly complicated, make them accessible.

Finally, the UK needs to invest in strengthening the infrastructure to make innovation possible. If we take ‘space’ for example, the US government only spends $18 billion per year on NASA. To put that into context, we spend more than £250 billion on welfare and our net spend to the EU before the pound was hit. Our previous approach to business development was focused on peppercorn grants of consultancy. I have always been highly critical of this strategy, which in my personal opinion is flawed and creates bureaucracy within the business sector.