"Shift Focus: How Britain Can Revitalize Work Incentives Beyond Just Cost of Living"

It’s time for British politics to stop focusing on the cost of living and start focusing on the cost of getting Britain back to work.

That’s my view as a businessman and the former , where I argued strongly for more targeted help for families who simply could not absorb soaring household bills.

That was the right thing to do, but now we need to face our uncomfortable truth head on.

We cannot fix the cost of living as Bailout Britain – in which every problem is answered with another subsidy, benefit or demand on businesses to pick up the bill.

Because ultimately there is only one sustainable answer to the cost-of-living crisis: a country that grows, creates good jobs and allows people to keep more of what they earn.

That is why I welcome saying he wants to be a pro-business .

He is right to talk about investment and wealth creation. Britain badly needs both.

But warm words towards business won’t be enough.

The and his new Chancellor, now need to be brave enough to change the direction of the economy.

And their first priority should be simple: make it cheaper to employ people, invest and grow.

Businesses do not create jobs in a vacuum.

Every rise in employers’ every punishing business rates bill, and every other additional cost imposed by Whitehall changes the calculation about whether to create another job.

Those decisions multiplied across every business in the country determine whether Britain grows or stagnates.

So the October should begin shifting the tax burden away from jobs and productive investment.

Cut the cost of employing people and go further on business rates.

Give companies the confidence that if they invest in Britain today, government will not simply come back and tax that investment tomorrow.

The fact is that successful businesses do more to remove poverty than any support programme can.

It’s time to make the brave decisions on welfare and use that money to boost business confidence and, ultimately, generate the taxes that pay for our schools, hospitals and public services.

I learnt that lesson early in my career, establishing a business in – a country that has since spent decades investing, building infrastructure, developing skills, attracting businesses and integrating itself into global supply chains.

This month, S&P Dow Jones Indices announced that Poland would be upgraded to developed-market status.

Britain needs some of that hunger again and nowhere is that more urgent than with our young people.

The latest figures show 981,000 young people aged 16 to 24 are not in employment, education or training.

Yes, that number has finally fallen below a million. But it is still 30,000 higher than a year ago.

As a father, that horrifies me.

Behind that statistic are hundreds of thousands of young lives at risk of starting adulthood without the routine, confidence, skills, friendships and sense of purpose that work can provide.

I believe work is a moral mission. Good work gives people independence and dignity and long periods without it are associated with poverty and poorer mental and physical health.

Of course there will always be people who are ill, disabled or facing circumstances in which the state must support them. A decent society protects them.

But compassion also means recognising that the welfare state should be a safety net and a springboard, not a system that leaves people who can work parked on benefits and written off.

We need dramatically better routes from school into work: proper apprenticeships, vocational training and work experience developing skills that employers actually need.

I therefore welcome the focus this week on creating more work placements.

But businesses will create far more opportunities if government removes the barriers stopping them from hiring in the first place.

Lower the cost of creating jobs, help businesses invest in skills, and make sure work always pays.

We must always give young people a real route into those jobs and stop entry jobs being replaced by AI.

Do that and Britain gets a triple dividend.

People move from welfare into wages. the benefits bill falls and tax revenues rise.

Businesses gain the people and skills they need to grow and, most importantly, a generation currently being offered too little hope gets a stake in the country’s future.

I know how painful the cost-of-living crisis has been.

But the biggest mistake we could make now would be to confuse helping people through a crisis with accepting the conditions that created it.

Britain cannot redistribute its way to prosperity; we have to build our way there.

says he wants to get Britain’s economy moving again. Now he and the Chancellor must prove they are prepared to make the difficult choices required to do it.