Ahead of the Budget on Wednesday, Albert Ellis, chief executive at Harvey Nash, has called on Chancellor George Osborne to deliver a Budget for business.

Among the measures Ellis is urging the Chancellor to take are lowering taxes and reducing the National Minimum Wage (NMW) for young unemployed graduates. 

Ellis told Recruiter: “In the last few weeks, unforeseen macro-economic and geopolitical events are now putting huge downward pressure on world growth.”

Ellis calls on the coalition to shake off complacency and urgently focus on the following:

• a massive roll back of restrictive employment legislation, both recent and old
• lower the minimum wage, particularly for young unemployed graduates to get into first time jobs
• publish a 10-year plan for a staged reduction of corporate and employment taxes (such as NI) focused on low growth areas in the UK
• publish a five-year plan to reduce the maximum marginal rates of income tax to 1990s levels
• confirm that all current and future governments will be bound by the lower capital gains rates on realisation of long-term investments

He adds: “The government needs to urgently send strong messages to the world that the UK is good for business. We all need to be asking ‘how will we find and nurture the UK’s equivalent of Google, Facebook or Apple?’.”