... In your New Year message, you call upon your party to ‘offer constructive and positive ideas to help keep people in work’. Here are some suggestions:

1   Despite the mantra that we must get the banks lending to small businesses again, what small businesses really need is to switch from fixed costs to variable costs.

There’s not much a government can, or should, do in this regard. But expecting businesses to pay taxes before they’ve made any money is a prescription for bankruptcy. It is the work of lunatics (the sort of business illiterates that fill government and the civil service) to levy, or allow to be levied, any charge or tax that is not directly proportional to consumption or profit.

Take business rates for example. These should be replaced by a profits tax, with perhaps charges imposed for services provided directly to the businesses concerned by their local authorities, such as rubbish collection. These charges should be no more than would otherwise be incurred in a competitive open market.

2   Any form of payroll tax that is charged to the employer is nuts. If you wish to create and sustain jobs the last thing you should be doing is taxing them! These costs should be borne by the employee or not at all.

The only occasion when an employer based payroll tax could be justified is when labour shortages are causing undesirable wage inflation. Even then they should be targeted and temporary – the Exchequer should not be allowed to get hooked on this cash stream.

3   The credit crunch is now being followed by the much-predicted-by-us jobs crunch. There’s no getting away from the fact that employee and family friendly policies have exacted a terrible toll on the jobs market. When you rob Peter to pay Paul you can rely on Paul’s vote. And that’s all populist politicians are concerned with, so Paul gets pandered to. Under modern western democracies Peter doesn’t get a vote, so he votes with his feet and doesn’t employ people.

If you want to protect jobs, even go one better and create jobs, you need to provide an environment that is conducive to this. It will be unpopular and will require political courage. And because so much of the burden is imposed by the EU you’ll have to take them on too. But the price for failure is generations of high unemployment and an underperforming economy.

The economy simply can’t afford these luxuries now. Businesses certainly can’t but if society wants them, it should pay for them – not wallow in the delusion that because some else shoulders the burden that they’re cost and implication free. Businesses should be compensated both for the administrative burden of complying with these regulations and for the loss of profits that arise when managers are not permitted to manage as they see fit.

4   There needs to be a culture change – possibly the hardest challenge of all to implement. Slowly the drip-drip effect has throttled innovation and enterprise and rewarded the administrator and bureaucrat. Running a business today simply does not provide the thrill, excitement and fulfilment that it once used did. Instead, the beleaguered business owner spends his time administering the politically correct and health & safety dictates of others rather than driving his business forward.

The people who enjoy running businesses today are administrators and functionaries. Unfortunately, they tend to be rather unenterprising sorts. Whereas what the economy needs, as everyone in their heart of hearts knows, is more flourishing entrepreneurs.

Finally, if any proof is needed, reflect on this: 20-30 years ago we and many, many people we know would, at our stage in life, be running businesses employing up to 50 people or more. Indeed, one of us had a payroll of 60 not so long ago ... but that was in a more benign, employer friendly environment. You might like to ponder why we, the people who could so easily deliver the economy from this recession cum depression, choose not to do so. The answer lies in incentive, and it’s not just financial.