London mayoral election 2016: Conservative candidate Zac Goldsmith courts small businesses
Conservative London mayoral candidate Zac Goldsmith will launch a charm offensive on the capital’s small businesses tonight, promising to provide them with better broadband, faster payments and more funding from City Hall.
Speaking at a dinner for London members of the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), Goldsmith will say that while “business is good in London”, politicians are guilty of “lumping” the so-called business community together.
“Too often policies are predicated on the assumption that what’s good for the big corporates is good for all businesses,” Goldsmith will say. “That is sometimes true, but not always.
“The business giants of today quite often favour regulatory hurdles that hold back the business giants of tomorrow, and politicians rarely strike the right balance.”
Goldsmith will vow that if he is elected, he will deliver super-fast broadband across London through a new partnership between Transport for London and private developers. He will also commit to pressuring larger firms to “ensure their payment terms are fair to smaller suppliers” and lobbying the national government to devolve skills funding to City Hall.