Why SMEs want more than verbal enthusiasm from politicians
5/17/202652 min
Is the government doing enough to prioritise British SMEs in its defence spending plans? Should price always come first or should more expensive British made goods be the priority? Or are we in danger of propping up zombie business? And with rising energy and employment costs, how hard is it to be a UK manufacturer now?
With the government aiming to increase UK SME defence spending by fifty percent, Steph talks to a manufacturer desperate to win back the MoD contracts it lost in the 1980s. Ben Fogle and James Sleater tell us their...
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsBen Fogle· Guest0:01
How can we grow the business and champion British manufacturing?
James Sleater· Guest0:04
The world's in a, in a, a difficult place, and the more the supply chain is kept local, it, it is easier. It's not always possible.
Ben Fogle· Guest0:11
How do we make a profit and how do we grow, keeping manufacturing in Sheffield, which is a commitment we've made?
Steph McGovern· Host0:18
Completely random. [laughs] Even though they've had loads of love from John Healey, the Defense Secretary, they're in his constituency, that it's just not following through. So should the government pay more for stuff, or should they go for the cheapest to save the public purse? That's the, the other dilemma here.
Robert Peston· Host0:35
Support for this episode comes from Octopus Energy, and the founder and CEO, Greg Jackson, is with us now. And I wanna ask about oil prices. Obviously, they're very high at the moment. What's your advice for a company worried about them?
Greg Jackson0:48
First of all, uh, if you use a lot of electricity, it may be possible to get electricity tariffs where you get charged less at certain times of day, and a lot of businesses have been able to benefit by shifting their electricity consumption. They still use as much energy, they just pay less for it. Of course, things like heating space can be very expensive, and finding ways to do that more efficiently by, uh, heating to maybe 18 degrees rather than 21 can make a very big difference. But of course, look, the real solution is that Britain needs to escape from this dependency on the global fossil fuel price, and that means more electrification, disconnects our electricity price from, uh, the gas price, and, uh, ultimately