The Budget fails to budge business investment

Responding to today’s Budget 2025, the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) Chief Executive Neil Carberry said:

“The Chancellor put growth at the heart of her speech, but there was too little in this Budget to get business investing. Alongside this, a forest of small changes will make our business tax system even more complex and raise more revenue from employers who do the right thing, such as offering great pensions or training more apprentices that their levy will pay for. Changes on tax credits for investors and employee ownership will make building and passing on a great small business more challenging. 

“This lack of action sits alongside too little progress on key areas such as reforms to the Employment Rights Bill and ever rising costs of employment, driven by government decisions, that are causing a spike in redundancies over the past year.

“There are some areas of progress. Moves on Business Rates, short course access to skills levy funding and funding for employment support schemes. But all such steps require private sector support and engagement.

“The Chancellor went out of her way to mention investment in increasing NHS appointments but the Budget documents repeat the misleading claim that government is saving money with its attack on agency staffing. Like so much of this Budget, an approach that involves and engages the private sector would yield so much more, and help close the fiscal gap on the back of a more prosperous country.”