- guardian.co.uk, Thursday November 9 2000 02.14 GMT
Having listened to this lazy rhetorical question once too often, I had to leap in and ask this guy where he had been for the past four years.
The business culture has changed. My working life is investing in and developing small, high-risk ventures at the cutting edge of scientific advance, and I can see and feel the change.
There are the headline-making initiatives - granting independence to the Bank of England, helping to foster historically low inflation and stable economic growth. It is easily forgotten that government borrowing ballooned to £28bn during the last year of the last Tory government, while Labour has cut the total figure by £46bn. Standard corporation tax has been cut to 30%, while a new 10% starting rate was introduced last April.
There are other measures which fail to get much publicity, such as the fact that investors in high-risk ventures will pay just 10% capital gains tax if they keep their money in place for five years, making first year capital allowances permanent for smaller and medium sized firms, and while much needs to be done in terms of making it easier to recruit and retain good quality staff with incentives like share options, a start has been made.
There is the tax relief on so-called corporate venturing - encouraging large firms to pump money into smaller ventures, promoting innovation - not to mention all the money pouring into regional venture capital funds. Since 1997, the average corporation tax bill for small companies has been cut by nearly 25%. Britain now has the lowest ever corporation tax rates for small companies and the lowest starting rate among major industrialised countries.
Previous Conservative governments did a lot of talking about new enterprise, opportunities for all and the like. But they did not follow through with practical solutions to particular issues.
Britain in the mid-90s was in serious danger of missing out on the new economic wave of the 21st century, and of falling further behind in the quality of its science and technology base.
I and other entrepreneurs told Labour what was needed before it came to power. It could have turned round and said "Fine, we hear what you say but we are now a Labour government." It didn't. It listened, and as a result we have a sea-change in terms of the acceptability of taking risk. It is beginning to take root at the lowest level - with enterprise clubs in schools, for example. More needs to be done, such as ensuring more scientists come through the education system. But the movement is there. Action is being taken.
Wealth creation and quality of life go hand in hand. You have to do it with a social conscience and with sympathy for your environment.
Some people feel uneasy with this. Some of those in Whitehall have a real problem with it. But Tony Blair and Gordon Brown understand the principle that business needs encouragement and that those, like myself, who have been lucky enough to have made some money already need encouragement to reinvest.
I am part of the macroeconomic system. I cannot influence how the Treasury spends the taxes I pay but I know the influence I can wield, backing people in new companies, creating jobs, new value and excitement. That is what I do for a living and by doing so I make a direct impact on society.
The government still has plenty of listening to do. One only has to look at the smaller end of the stock market-listed sector to see some glaring problems. Only 30% of investors in the British market are retail investors, while in Germany the figure is 60%. This no doubt has something to do with the fact that anyone who puts money into the Neuer Markt, the German market for growth companies, pays no capital gains tax.
There is a lesson there. We need to think in terms of small being beautiful. It is great to have multi-billion-pound companies. It is a credit to this government that Robin Saxby at Arm (the chip designer) and Andrew Rickman of Bookham Technology (a specialist in optic fibres) are now here. Their existence encourages so many others. But creating a £10m company, employing 50 people and making profits is a real achievement - for yourself and for society. It's very "Labour" - new or old.
So let's have lots more direct measures, forming something that is probably best described as the "glue" of the enterprise culture.
It will take time to set, maybe 10 or 15 years. There will still be the whinger asking what has this government done for small business. It should by then be safe to ignore him.
• Chris Evans is a serial entrepreneur, specialising in biotechnology. Companies he has backed include Chiroscience, Celsis and Merlin Biosciences
