'Millions wasted' on all-consuming Brexit, slams CBI chief
The director general of the CBI has lambasted the millions wasted by business preparing for a no-deal Brexit as she called on government and the private sector to work more closely together.
Addressing the business organisation’s annual conference on Monday morning, Carolyn Fairbairn said Brexit was “consuming” government.
“Every politician, every civil servant. And it is also consuming British business,” she said. “Our firms are spending hundreds of millions of pounds preparing for the worst case, and not one penny of it will create new jobs or new products.
“Investment is flooding out of the right areas, like skills and tech, and into areas which do absolutely nothing to help our productively.”
She continued: “While other countries are forging a competitive future, Westminster seems to be living in its own narrow world, in which extreme positions are allowed to dominate. The result is a high-stake game of risk where the outcome could be an accidental no-deal.”
Although she did not give the Prime Minister Theresa May’s withdrawal deal her explicit backing, calling it a “compromise”, Fairbairn conceded “it is hard-won progress” and that nothing could be achieved without “a good Brexit outcome”.
Looking beyond the UK’s departure from the European Union, Fairbairn said government and business had a common goal of ensuring the economy performed well.
But she added: “Where there is rather less agreement is on the how, on the policy ideas to get there. And here we need to much better conversation.”
Instead she argued there needed to be a “spirit of collaboration” because “too much of the UK’s current approach is characterised by enterprise and government acting apart”.
She also warned against a return to nationalised industry. Labour has indicated it wants to nationalise a variety of companies, including rail and postal services, but Fairbairn said: “We should remember that when nationalisation was last tried in the 1970s, it ushered in one of the darkest periods in our country’s modern economic history. Let’s not return there.”