A new survey suggests that mid-size British manufacturing firms are generally in favour of remaining part of Europe – albeit with concessions
A poll by accountancy firm BDO LLP shows that around 60 per cent of Britain’s mid-market manufacturing firms are in favour of staying in the European Union.
Of the companies surveyed, 59 per cent said they wish to stay in the EU under the proposed new terms, while 67 per cent believed that leaving the EU would make it harder to run a successful business.
The survey focused on firms with annual revenue of between £10m to £300m. This broad cross section accounts for an estimated 80 per cent of the UK’s manufacturing businesses. Combined, they create one in four private sector jobs and account for around a third of the UK’s total revenue (over £1 trillion a year), according to BDO, yet make up just one per cent of all UK companies.
While the arguments for and against a so-called ‘Brexit’ are much the same for mid-sized companies as they are for other manufacturing outfits, there’s a danger that this crucial sector is being overlooked, according to BDO’s head of manufacturing, Tom Lawton.
“For many years there has been a lot of government emphasis on SMEs [with a turnover of less than £20m]. At the other end of the spectrum, the very large corporations tend to have the resources to pursue grants and support on their own. The mid-market is hugely significant, but it’s somewhat forgotten when it comes to government incentives and support for export.”
Despite being in favour of staying, mid-market firms do want further changes to the EU, BDO’s survey suggests. When asked what other reforms they would like to see, 73 per cent of firms cited less red tape. In particular, those polled wanted to see regulatory off-setting with every new regulation adopted leading to one existing EU regulation removed.
The importance of improving trade agreements to help boost exports was also highlighted. Just under half the firms surveyed (44 per cent) said they wanted the EU to have a greater focus on trade agreements such as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with the US and other high growth markets like India.
This is some sort of consensus opinion and I am very suspicious of such polls.
Does The Engineer agree with the BDO methodology, (looks suspect as to who represented the companies surveyed)?
Unfortunately, I am no nearer to deciding where to place my x, and it seems that my lucky penny will have to make the decision, unless some clear analyses are forthcoming regarding the longer term economics and real costs / benefits of each case.
In trying to understand the cost / benefits of EU membership, it appears that EU membership costs the UK about £ 10b / year (difference between what we pay in and what we get back), then we have a trade deficit with the EU of about £10b (Purchases from – sales to EU countries).
1. Do we get anything back for our net contribution, or is the loss purely a benevolence?
2. If we switched some of our EU purchases to China / USA / Russia / India etc. would we actually save money and improve our balance of payments?
The lack of clarity on such simple economics is frightening: do our leaders not understand cash balances or do they think that we are too stupid to understand simple economic sums.
All of the debate is in generalisations and “believe me I’m an honest politician” style, I am moving towards the Brexit rapidly, from being very pro-EU, mainly because of the use of fear-of-change as opposed to explanation of what benefits we actually get from membership.
Am continuing with my search for info that makes a real case for stay or Brexit.
The CBI have made claims that the EU was worth £70b / year to UK. This appears to be fantasy as the UK only exports £42b /year to the EU….Do they have some real reason for making such spurious claims?
The UK pays about £ 9b / year net into the EU according to ONS. The main beneficiaries appear to be agriculture in France, Germany, Spain and Italy. Apparently we have been paying in at this rate for many years: Why, what do we actually get for this?
The UK in October 2015 had a Trade Balance of -£11.9b (say £140b/year) deficit in goods trade with the EU: they will certainly miss us if we leave!
Our Trade balance in goods with the rest of of the world was -£4b in October (say £ 50 b/year): fortunately, services appear to be in credit to reduce our trade balance. The trade volumes with EU and Rest of World are similar but our imbalance with the EU is – £ 61 b, while with the R of W our balance is £ 27b.
I am no economist and cannot be sure of the numbers that I use, but why are Journalists and Economists not presenting the numbers for our consideration? So far I have failed to find any statistical basis to support staying in, so am moving closer to the Brexit vote.