According to the Federation of Small Businesses, the number of small businesses and the self-employed in Britain has doubled over the last 20 years, and is now five million. That figure exaggerates. Nevertheless, there has been a real growth. Big businesses use more and more small subcontractors. Workers displaced by industrial restructuring who have some savings or a large redundancy pay-out use the money to set up on their own.
Insecurity is rife.
Each year one business in ten is wound up. In recent years farmers have suffered severely from the BSE crisis and from pressure by the increasingly dominant supermarket chains to reduce supply prices. Small hauliers suffer from overcapacity in their industry and new advantages given to the bigger companies by new computer technologies. Lower fuel tax will not resolve these problems. The competitive gap between big hauliers and small will remain the same.