The government needs to provide a more “business-friendly” regulatory environment to drive growth, according to Graeme Read, group managing director at global recruiter Antal International.

A Populus poll for The Times today shows Britain is ranked fourth behind the US, Germany and China as a location to set up a new business, but ahead of India and France. The UK was ranked bottom on personal and business taxation.

Read told Recruiter: “The government can work on Entrepreneurs’ Relief, helping people to set up more businesses and create more employment and enable people to take risks when hiring staff.

“Legislation in terms of employee protection needs to be looked at to see where there are opportunities to make legislation mutually business-friendly while providing safeguards for employees.

“I think the emerging countries of India and China are more competitive due to growth. With China growing at 9%, it is naturally a better place to do business than the UK. We need to kickstart the UK economy because 0.5% growth just isn’t an exciting environment to do business in.

“Growth will come from SMEs. The government needs to provide a more business-friendly regulatory environment, making it easier to take risks and invest in setting up business and expanding. That will kickstart the engines — at the moment the UK economy is moving sideways.”