Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-10-26-Speech-4-120"
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"en.20001026.4.4-120"2
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"Mr President, first of all I should declare an interest. I am the absentee boss of a very small enterprise, our family business in London. I will not say what it does, that might constitute an advertisement, but it was founded by my father, Francis Chichester, and I am very proud of it. It also enables me to come here and do my work for my constituents.
I would like to welcome any measures, like this proposal and this report, that indicate our support at European level for the importance of SMEs and small businesses in particular. I would like to congratulate Mrs Montfort on all her hard work in her report which, as we have heard, commands wide support across the House.
In my view, the best thing for small businesses is for the authorities to leave them alone and to desist from the temptation of trying to pick winners. Diversity, safety in numbers, from which the winners will emerge, is the best way forward. I am reminded of what the Commissioner said to us a year ago about the experience in the United States, where they are not afraid of failure and they believe in the old Scottish proverb of "if at first you don't succeed, try, try again". The importance is to strike the right balance, to avoid having a continual situation of people failing at the expense of other people.
I suspect that the real obstacles and hurdles that small businesses face are in other areas of European and national legislation, where they face great burdens in terms of administration, taxation and regulation. That seems very onerous indeed for small businesses, disproportionately so. I recently looked at the forms required for filling in tax returns for small businesses in the UK and the detail required great concentration on getting the right answer.
Let me close by saying that in my view the most important thing for small businesses, the best medicine for them, is competition. That is the way they achieve efficiency, innovation and profitability."@en1
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