IoD Week in Policy 4 – 8 September 2023
A week of starting over. For many it’s the start of a new school year. For some Labour MPs it’s the start of a new position in the party as Starmer followed Sunak’s lead and shuffled things up a bit. We’ve finally been graced with a summer – that’s new. What’s not new is the way we are always complaining about the weather…
On the horizon – The UK has been granted access to Horizon, the world’s biggest multilateral research programme worth €95.5 billion. The UK having access to the programme was actually part of the post-Brexit trade deal but was delayed as part of the dispute over the Northern Ireland Protocol and only resolved when the Windsor Agreement was signed earlier this year. This fresh start will be welcome news to British scientists and business, who will now be able to apply for grants from this fund.
Non-dom status – Ofgem opened a consultation its non-domestic energy market review to which we responded on behalf of IoD members. They identified some areas where they thought businesses were being harmed by the way the energy market was currently working and developed a package of policy measures in response. Read our thoughts on this here.
Cracking codes – Consultation number two of the week looked at changes to the UK Corporate Governance Code, proposed by the Financial Reported Council. We are a strong advocate of a principles-based approach to corporate governance regulation, which underpins our overall support for the Code. Read our full response here.
Interest peaked? – The Bank of England (BoE) has published the results of their Decision Maker Panel survey, a survey of Chief Financial Officers used to track business views of developments in the economy. The results reveal businesses expect CPI inflation to fall over the next year. Andrew Bailey, governor of the BoE indicated a further interest rate rise may not be necessary and these results reflect that.
Next week, look out for…
Tuesday 12 September
- ONS will release labour market statistics including updates on wage inflation and unemployment.
- Our latest Policy Voice survey will go live. We will be asking members about their order books, flexible working and upcoming import controls. You can find our Policy Voice data hub here, where we upload the results of our surveys and evidence how the data has influence.
Wednesday 13 September
- ONS will release their GDP monthly estimate for July 2023
- ONS will release UK trade statistics for July 2023
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