Copy article

Chancellor kickstarts Britain’s new scale-up surge

ended 10. December 2025

The Chancellor welcomed the UK’s top entrepreneurs to No10 Downing Street last night (8 December), celebrating a bold new plan to back homegrown founders and continue making Britain one of the best places in the world to scale a business as part of the government’s modern Industrial Strategy. 

Founders, investors and innovators from across the UK – including meal-in-a-bottle firm Huel, savings app MoneyBox and crime-busting tech company Quantexa – heard the Chancellor’s message loud and clear: economic growth is the government’s number one mission, and Britain’s entrepreneurs will be central to delivering it.

This is not a wind-up. 

The Government also said the British Business Banks will invest £5 billion in growing companies, crowding in billions more private capital and supporting firms through the risky “Valley of Death” stage so they can scale, hire and export from British soil.

Have a scan of the announcement then have at it. With talk of 'the valley of death', they've just teed up a classic Newspage news story. Over to you…

11 responses from the Newspage community

Copy all

Copy

Editor
Kate Underwood
Founder & Chief People Strategist at Kate Underwood HR and Training
Calling this a rescue from the ‘valley of death’ is cute; most small businesses are still crawling through it on their knees. Honestly, it reads like someone in No. 10 has been sniffing the Christmas sherry early. This is a love note to glossy tech scale-ups, not the hairdresser, electrician or small agency trying to cover wage rises, holiday pay, sick leave and still pay the owner. Founders do not need more buzzwords. They need cash flow, clarity and fewer HR and legal curveballs.
Spend an hour this week lining up your contracts, pay rates and holiday calculations, and sort any wobbles now before a tribunal judge does it for you.
Copy

Editor
Darryl Dhoffer
Founder at The Mortgage Geezer
The UK Government officially scrapped the Industrial Strategy in 2021 during the premiership of Boris Johnson, replacing it with a new policy focus, most notably the "Levelling Up" agenda. Consequently, any major policy reference to the "modern Industrial Strategy" has not been considered current UK Government policy for several years, which renders the entire premise of the original announcement obsolete. Plus, the claim on the British Business Bank successfully "crowding in" billions of private capital ? Pretty difficult outcome to measure and guarantee. Furthermore, it beggars the question if a public body possesses the necessary commercial expertise and risk appetite to efficiently deploy funds and truly bridge the risky "Valley of Death" stage for scaling companies, arguing decisions may be politically rather than commercially driven.
Copy

Editor
Matthew Knight
Chief Freelance Officer at Freelancing.Support
The Chancellor saying she’s backing Britain’s entrepreneurs while simultaneously stripping away the tax provisions that help small businesses survive is contradictory. If the government’s industrial strategy genuinely relies on homegrown entrepreneurs to drive growth, policy needs to match the promise. We need a landscape that reduces risk, helps new and small businesses avoid tax traps and heavier administrative burdens, and offers support regardless of business type — not only those that export, employ or are already looking to scale. Most importantly, it must recognise the risks entrepreneurs take on, rather than taxing them as if they were employees. Support for scale-ups is welcome, but creating a supportive environment for the self-employed, start-ups and microbusinesses is essential if we want more businesses to grow in the first place.
Copy

Editor
Michelle Lawson
Director at Lawson Financial
Classic mixed messaging and two-tier Government buzz-words where actions speak louder than words. The Chancellor's recent Budget pushed businesses further into the ground and then enabling them to grow! If only the cabinet truly understood how business works. Scaling isn't just about house-hold names and big businesses- there are also small local firms that want to grow organically that have been strangulated by tax, red tape, spiralling costs to stand still and rampant pay-rises even for the unskilled labour market. Growth comes from within and is at its best when taxes are lower and businesses can invest. Right now, one full time unskilled employee is around £25k to stand still in wages before NI, tax and pension contributions- that is a significant outlay for most small businesses.
Copy

Editor
Tony Redondo
Founder at Cosmos Currency Exchange
The history of government attempts to cherry-pick business winners is littered with business skeletons. Labour’s manifesto in 2024 promised £8bn in tax rises by 2029, yet it has already increased taxes by £70bn in just two budgets, raised the National Minimum Wage and business rates, and imposed the Employment Rights Bill on struggling firms. Does Reeves think canapes with handpicked businesses will revive a moribund economy? The guest list hardly represents typical British enterprise. FSB statistics show 5.7 million SMEs in the UK, with 5.4 million being micro businesses, representing 99.9% of all UK firms. SMEs employ 61% of the private sector workforce and generate 25% of GDP, yet 89% of firms report higher costs than a year ago, with inflation the overriding concern and the domestic economy the main growth barrier. The SME sector is vital to Britain's economy but faces significant headwinds from inflation, uncertainty, and spiralling business costs.
Copy

Editor
Rob Mansfield
Independent Financial Advisor at Rootes Wealth Management
It's good to see the government supporting British business and it's great PR for these firms to be snapped at number 10. The reality is though that this government doesn't understand business and is only interested in their growth for the future tax receipts. These firms often need capital and so cutting the tax relief on Venture Capital Trusts (VCTs) is unlikely to aid that cause, albeit the qualifying criteria for companies has widened. The government doesn't have a clear message on growth and seem to think it can be willed out of thin air.
Copy

Editor
Dariusz Karpowicz
Director at Albion Financial Advice
That's a rather mixed bag of messages from the government. First we shall protect the working man, whoever that is, and now we shall help businesses grow. Next they might promise to fix potholes and build 1.5 million homes. Oh wait, they did, and look where we are with those.
Throwing a party at No10 for handpicked scale ups while most of the UK's 5.5 million small businesses are working out how to absorb rising NICs, minimum wage hikes and new employment rules feels a bit tone deaf. The real entrepreneurs, your local trades, small agencies and micro firms, do not need champagne receptions. They need lower taxes, less red tape and actual cash flow support. History shows governments are not great at picking winners, and this looks more like a photo opportunity than a serious plan for growth.
Copy

Jill Poet
CEO at Organisation for Responsible Businesses
Rachel Reeves says: "This government backs our entrepreneurs."

This clearly is not true. This bells & whistles announcement is aimed ONLY at high-growth scale-ups.

Someone ought to remind Rachel Reeves and her government what the definition of an entrepreneur is. In simple terms, anyone who takes the risk of setting up their own business where they would be bearing most of the risks and enjoying most of the rewards, if they are any!

Currently 75% of private businesses in the UK have no employees. That is over 4 million businesses.

Another million+ private businesses in the UK, a further 20%, have 1 to 9 employees.

Yes. That is correct (Gov.UK's own figures) 95 % of businesses in the UK are tiny. Some of them will prove to be high-growth, but only a small percentage.

Yet these tiny businesses deliver 20% of UK turnover.

What support has this government offered these tiny yet mighty businesses? None whatsoever.

Perhaps Rachel needs a lesson on entrepreneurship
.

Copy

Colette Mason
AI Ethics Consultant at Clever Clogs AI
The Chancellor threw a party at No10 last night. Meanwhile, business owners are doing the Budget maths and realising they've been mugged.

Again.

Employer NICs is going up. NMW is rising. And if you're a business owner paying yourself dividends, because that's how small companies work, you're hammered thrice. Once through higher employer costs, corporation tax, then again through dividend taxes treating your already-taxed profit like the government's personal piggy bank.

These billions go to companies with investor backing. The rest of us work out how to absorb cost rises without sacking people or folding.

EMI scheme reforms? Lovely if you can afford to employ people. Growth Catalyst funding? Fantastic unless you're one of 5.5 million SMEs who'll never see a penny but will definitely pay for it.

Back a few entrepreneurs and get some good press releases. Tax the rest into the ground.
Copy

Patricia McGirr
Founder at Repossession Rescue Network
Death Valley for businesses didn’t appear out of nowhere. It was designed in Whitehall, priced in at the last Budget and handed to entrepreneurs as a seasonal gift. The government still can’t bring itself to class business owners as working people, yet now we get a party at No10 to applaud a few scale-up stars and call it a revival of enterprise. Most firms don’t need a chandelier reception. They need a tax and funding system that doesn’t treat them as collateral. And in the spirit of Christmas, you can only assume the three wise men behind this spectacle were more focused on the photo opportunity than the fallout. For the rest of the business community, it feels less like policy and more like panto.
Copy

Arabella Harvey
Owner at Raven Botanicals
If we are serious about making Britain the best place in the world to scale a business, then meaningful progress depends on recognising female-led companies as one of the most undervalued economic assets we have. Evidence shows we are an untapped powerhouse in both the UK and export economy, yet the support mechanisms that unlock scale for other firms stop short when it comes to women. Funding structures, risk frameworks and investment pipelines still default to a narrow founder profile, and the result is lost growth, lost innovation and lost tax revenue.