GrowthBusiness readers are divided in their views on last week’s Budget.
Just over a third of the entrepreneurs who responded to a poll on this website say the measures will help their business, while a similar number believe that Chancellor George Osborne has ‘got it all wrong’.
The remainder, just under a third, say the Budget will not help their business but believe Osborne’s drive to cut the public sector deficit is a necessary evil.
Charlie Mullins, founder of small business Pimlico Plumbers says, ‘The next five or six years are going to be hard graft for all of us, make no mistake about it. However, this is a Budget that pulls everyone together to face the battle ahead.’
However John Philpott, chief economic adviser at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, talks of an ‘unprecedented fiscal squeeze’ leading to slower economic growth than forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility and rising unemployment.
Philpott adds, ‘The 2010 emergency Budget is not the beginning of the end of the UK’s post-recession economic difficulty but the start of a period of painfully slow growth, falling living standards, and prolonged high unemployment.’
The Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts that 610,000 public sector jobs will be lost over the course of this parliament.
