It is hardly a closely-guarded secret that the UK’s largest companies are holding onto a large pile of cash, estimated to be more than £300 billion.
While the Government is expecting recovery from the 2008 economic crisis to come from the private sector, the latter remains focused on minimising tax bills and maximising short term rewards to shareholders and CEOs, while avoiding risky investment at all costs.
One of the major complaints among businesses at all levels is that they are finding it hard to recruit the skilled and educated people they need. At the same time investment in research and development is dwindling.
There can be no future reward without taking some risks and thinking for the longer term but businesses also have to recognise that their activities are also made possible because of the benefits they derive from a combination of the physical infrastructure and education system, the so-called public goods that are often taken for granted.
Perhaps it is about time that businesses realised that if they want to grow and develop and if they want a supply of educated people, they need to take some responsibility by unlocking some of their capital to support innovative new enterprises, to invest in Research and Development in our universities and in their own companies and to help the existing and future workforce to acquire the skills companies say are in short supply.
This may require a degree of restructuring of companies’ own operations and at the very least restructuring their current short term, risk-averse thinking to enable investment over a longer period.
While the Government is considering closing the loopholes that make tax avoidance possible it could perhaps also consider a tax on unused capital sitting on company balance sheets to stimulate some investment in the economic future of UK Plc.
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