Charlie Elphicke is the Member of Parliament for Dover and Deal. Follow Charlie on Twitter. Late payment is a big issue for small businesses. It costs jobs. It drives companies under. It harms growth. My last article looked at steps the Government is taking to get the public sector paying on time. In this article I am focussing on […]
Charlie Elphicke is the Member of Parliament for Dover and Deal. Follow Charlie on Twitter. Late payment to small businesses costs jobs. It stunts economic growth. Late payment by government is particularly unacceptable. Recent figures show that unaccountable quangos are the worst offenders. The Government was right to launch Prompt Payment Day. Yet more could be done: the “Prompt […]
Charlie Elphicke is the Member of Parliament for Dover & Deal. Follow Charlie on Twitter. Last week the White Cliffs of Dover remained blue. They did not go red. They did not go purple. The Conservatives beat off Labour and came first in the popular vote. Why? Because we were clear what the election was about. […]
Charlie Elphicke is the Member of Parliament for Dover and Deal. Follow Charlie on Twitter. As soon as some money wafts by Ed Balls can be relied on to grab it and misspend it. The 4G auction episode shows how hopelessly addicted to spending they still are. £4Bn? Nevermind the deficit and £1trillion of debt, […]
Charlie Elphicke is the Member of Parliament for Dover and a member of the Public Administration Select Committee. Most Conservative MPs, myself included, are exasperated by the European Union. Meanwhile people across Britain tell pollsters they want some sort of referendum to express a deep felt disgust with the whole thing. There is annoyance that the […]
Charlie Elphicke is MP for Dover and a member of the Public Administration Select Committee. Labour like to say the Coalition is going “too far too fast” on cutting the deficit. What they mean is they would like to saddle you with £8,000 more debt than the Coalition. Yesterday, Ed Balls was at it again, denying […]
Charlie Elphicke is MP for Dover and a member of the Public Administration Select Committee. It’s sort of a rule in politics that the more boring something sounds, the more likely it is to be interesting. So is proving to be the case with my investigation of the “Government Procurement Card”. Behind the sort of name […]
13.6m people work in Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) – 6 out of 10 private sector workers. Big business accounts for 9.2m jobs – 4 out of 10 of UK private sector workers. The graph shows the jobs splits between SMEs and big business since 1994: It is noteworthy that SMEs have been the […]
Discussion of a “growth agenda” for the UK has seen dividing lines drawn between backers of big business and supporters of small enterprise. We are told some Government departments want to cosy up to the big boys, while others are said to be lining up behind the small enterprises. Who is right? Small business – […]
Charlie Elphicke is PPC for Dover, a regular contributor to the CentreRight blog and a research fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies. Here he summarises his new paper, A House Divided, which is published today and is available to dowload at the CPS website. Do you remember those heady days back in 1997 when […]
This morning we posted the Budget hopes of ConservativeHome's expert panel of political figures and commentators in their respective areas of interest or expertise. Did Alistair Darling deliver what they hoped for? Their responses will be posted during the course of the afternoon. 5pm Jill Kirby, Director of the Centre for Policy Studies, on The […]
In advance of today's Budget, ConservativeHome assembled an expert panel of political figures and commentators to outline what they hope to see from today's Budget in their area of interest or expertise. Their thoughts are below and once Alistair Darling has delivered the Budget, we will post their reactions here on Platform later this afternoon. […]
Charlie Elphicke is PPC for Dover & Deal, Kent, a contributor to CentreRight.com and a research fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies. This Platform summarises Charlie’s latest paper for the Centre for Policy Studies, which is available at the CPS website. Today I have published a paper with the Centre for Policy Studies that […]
Charlie Elphicke, the candidate for Dover and a research fellow of the Centre for Policy Studies, argues that the challenge of worklessness is being shirked by importing migrant labour. How many workless people are there in the UK? This question has been under the spotlight recently. Across the country as a whole there are nearly […]
A UK Shale Gas fund, developed over time, could provide a sustainable financial legacy for future generations