Scrap business rates entirely and replace them with a land value tax
Business rates are a tax on improvement. You invest in your property, you pay more. You leave it derelict, you pay nothing. This is backwards. It punishes exactly the behaviour we want and rewards exactly the behaviour we dont.
Land value tax does the opposite. It taxes the unimproved value of the land, which is created by the community (infrastructure, planning, demand) rather than the owner. A derelict site in central London would pay the same LVT as the building next door because the land value is the same. This creates a massive incentive to develop, build, and use land productively.
LVT is endorsed by economists across the spectrum from Adam Smith to Milton Friedman to Joseph Stiglitz. It is one of the very few taxes that economists almost unanimously agree improves efficiency rather than reducing it. It cannot be avoided through offshoring. It cannot be gamed through holding companies. The land does not move.
Start with commercial property. Phase it in over 5 years. The high street would be transformed.
Let builders build: reform planning from the ground up
Britain does not have a land shortage. It has a permission shortage. Only about 6% of English land is built on. The reason housing is expensive is not that we have run out of space. It is that the planning system makes it extraordinarily difficult to turn any of the remaining 94% into homes.
The average time from application to completion for a large housing development in England is now over four years. That is not careful stewardship. That is bureaucratic paralysis.
Adopt a rules-based zoning system like those in Japan, Germany, or Houston. Define clearly what can be built where. If a development meets the criteria, it proceeds without a discretionary committee hearing. Reserve full planning review for genuinely sensitive sites, heritage areas, and environmental protection zones.
This would not mean building on every green field. It would mean that when a site is appropriate for development, the decision takes weeks, not years. Every month of delay adds cost that gets passed to the buyer. Planning reform is housing policy.
Raise the VAT threshold to £150k and simplify taxes for small businesses
The UK VAT threshold is £90,000. Cross it and you are suddenly managing quarterly VAT returns, Making Tax Digital, and a layer of compliance that has nothing to do with your actual business. I know founders who deliberately hold revenue below the threshold because the admin costs of going over make it not worth it. That is a government actively discouraging growth.
Raise the threshold to £150,000. Simplify the return process. And while we are at it, merge National Insurance and income tax into a single transparent levy, because the current dual system exists for no reason other than to disguise the true tax rate.
Britain needs more businesses starting, growing, and hiring. Every hour a small business owner spends on compliance is an hour not spent on the product, the customer, or the next hire. The state should collect what it needs as simply as possible and then get out of the way.
A British DARPA to fund high-risk, high-reward scientific research
ARIA (the Advanced Research and Invention Agency) was a good idea, underfunded and overcautious. The model it was based on, DARPA in the United States, has a track record that speaks for itself: the internet, GPS, mRNA vaccine technology, and autonomous vehicles all trace their origins to DARPA-funded research.
The key to DARPA is not just funding. It is programme managers with the autonomy to make big bets without committee approval, and the freedom to fail without career consequences. The British version needs the same. Hire exceptional scientists, give them budgets, let them fund the most ambitious ideas they can find, and accept that most of them will fail. The ones that succeed will more than pay for the rest.
Fund it at £1 billion per year, which is still a fraction of what the US invests. Protect it from Treasury meddling and departmental interference. The returns from breakthrough science are enormous but they take time, and they require a tolerance for failure that the British public sector has never been comfortable with.
Make it possible to start a company in one hour with zero cost
In Estonia, you can register a company online in about 15 minutes. In New Zealand it takes a single form and costs roughly £10. In the UK it takes at least a day, costs £50, and that is before you register for PAYE, VAT, and whatever else HMRC requires before you have earned a single penny.
The barrier to starting a business should be zero. Literally zero. One form. No fee. Done in an hour, including company registration, tax registration, and a basic business bank account. The technology exists to do this now. Estonia proved it a decade ago.
Some people will argue this invites fraud. Fine. Police the fraudulent companies. Do not make 99 honest founders jump through hoops because of the 1 dishonest one. Every unnecessary barrier to starting a business is a tax on ambition, and we wonder why entrepreneurship rates in the UK lag behind our competitors.
Create a fast-track AIM listing path for UK scale-ups that are growing but not yet profitable
The London Stock Exchange is in slow decline. AIM listings have halved in the last five years. The companies that should be listing here - British AI labs, biotech, clean energy, fintech - are instead moving to New York, or going private, or listing in Dublin and Amsterdam.
One concrete reason: the UK requirement that a company demonstrate either three years of profitability or a clear path to it within twelve months. The US equivalent - SPAC or direct listing - has no such test. The result is that a company like Revolut, which was founded in London, is talking about listing in New York. We trained the people, built the product here, took the regulatory risk, and then the capital markets reward goes to someone else.
Create a Growth Tier on AIM. No profitability requirement. Instead, a track record of sustained revenue growth above 30% year on year for two consecutive years, plus audited accounts, plus enhanced disclosure. Make it easier to list, with extra transparency attached as the trade-off.
This is how you keep British companies British. Not by appealing to patriotism. By making it rational to stay.
What do you think?
Vote on individual policies, adapt them, or write your own alternative. Good ideas should be tested.