24 Feb 2021
By Stuart Patrick, Chief Executive of Glasgow Chamber of Commerce
Is it too optimistic to suggest businesses can finally plan for an end to the crisis? Since the start of the year by far the most persistent request I was hearing from Chamber members was for our political leadership to provide an indicative exit road map.
For businesses, and especially smaller businesses, struggling to manage dwindling financial reserves, the ability to negotiate with banks or other funding sources has been very difficult without some sense of an end game.
We were primed to expect the Prime Minister’s Monday statement on the English road map to be cautious and hedged with caveats. We were told it would be “data not dates” that would drive the pace of reopening.
That is largely what we were given although dates were rather more specific, albeit subject to delay if the evidence requires it.
It may be tempting to treat those dates as fixed – some Monday broadcasts were already doing that – but they should be respected as best-case aspirations given all that we have learnt over the past year.
I would think that businesses in England will finally feel there is a clearer planning horizon. For those that still have at least three to four months to go before their doors can open it will only be after next week’s Budget announcements from the Chancellor that they will know whether they can make it through.
The First Minister’s announcement was disappointingly thinner in detail with very little beyond April. I would hope any ultimate differences are moderate primarily because it is so important to business survival that there is alignment between the lifting of restrictions and the ongoing provision of financial support which only the Chancellor can fund. That is why we have always preferred the greatest possible four nation co-ordination.
On the face of it the Prime Minister’s plan answers most of the questions our members were asking. The criteria for reopening are laid out in the four tests on vaccine effectiveness and distribution, the rates of infection and hospitalisation, and the incidence of challenging virus variants.
There will be debate no doubt about the relative significance of those tests and the progress being made, but at least we now have greater clarity on how decisions will be made.
Equally we have a relatively clear ordering of priorities – education first followed by family contact and then business reopening. The suite of announced reviews should also help answer challenges businesses have been posing on the implications successful vaccination should have for social distancing and the role testing can play in helping open up activities like major events.
The review on international travel will be vital for our airports and the review on working from home is a critical component in understanding when our city centres can properly recover. The First Minister is always free to choose a different direction but the reviews will be evidence that will very likely also influence opinion in Scotland.
Now we await the Chancellor’s plans on business support. Kate Forbes’ commitment to a further full year of business rates relief for retail, hospitality and aviation was very welcome, but we now need to see generous commitments by the Chancellor on the job retention scheme and on the strategic framework business fund.
Ideally these schemes will be extended not just until the proposed June date for the final reopening of affected businesses but for a good bit further to allow demand to recover.
There was no doubt an open-ended winter lockdown was undermining confidence. This week’s announcements may galvanise businesses into one final push through to the end.
This article was first published in The Herald on Wednesday 24 February 2021
