Creating a sovereign wealth fund and boosting small business: Ed Davey speech previews

There’s a double dose of media coverage featuring previews of Ed Davey’s speech to the Liberal Democrat spring conference:

The billions of pounds being raised by green energy auctions should be used to set up a sovereign wealth fund and invested across the UK, Ed Davey will say…

“Just last month, an auction for the right to build windfarms off the coast of England and Wales attracted bids far, far higher than anyone expected – raising £9bn, with more to come,” he will tell his party at the gathering, which is being held online this year because of Covid-19.

“This green wealth doesn’t belong to Rishi Sunak, or the Tories. It belongs to the British people. So I say: let’s invest it in a sovereign green wealth fund.” [The Independent]

and

Ed Davey is to call for a “bold” £5.5 billion-a-year tax break for small businesses as he urges the Government to put them at the heart of a post-Covid recovery.

In his speech to the party’s online spring conference on Sunday, Sir Ed will call on Chancellor Rishi Sunak to “slash” national insurance contributions (NICs) for small firms by quadrupling the employment allowance from £4,000 to £16,000.

He will say that the move would mean no small business would have to pay any NICs on their first five employees.

“The UK’s economic recovery starts with small business. Small businesses are at the heart of every local community, and every local economy,” he is expected to say. [Evening Standard]

Keep up with news about Lib Dem conference

If you’d like to be notified by email when further posts about Liberal Democrat conference appear on this blog, just sign up here. (Note: if you’re already signed up for a daily email alert with all my new blog posts, then there’s no need to sign up for these alerts too as the stories will also be in the full daily digest.)