THE Government has failed on its levelling up agenda and we are facing a looming labour shortage, a prominent business figure has said

Christopher Nieper said a looming labour shortage will exacerbate problems

THE Government’s failure on its leveling up agenda is fuelling the misery caused by the cost of living crisis, a prominent business figure has said.

David Nieper Fashion CEO Christopher Nieper told GB News the cost of living crisis had been made worse for many by the Government as they’d wasted time by not dealing with leveling up. 

“I don’t know whether they [Government] can react quick enough,” he said. “They’ve already wasted a couple of years of government not dealing with the levelling up agenda which is their number one stated domestic priority.

“Of course, it’s right, we’ve got cost pressures, all our costs have gone up – energy fabric materials, and actually as a change in the pattern of consumer behaviour, we’re finding people are being a bit more cautious, a bit more considerate about what they’re buying.

“But the real defining factor, I think, for the next decade, is going to be scarcity of labour.”

He was speaking during a discussion about the Queen’s Speech during On The Money with Liam Halligan on GB News.

Mr Nieper said the Government needs to take steps to develop domestic talent to fill roles that are going unfilled.

“This scarcity of labour actually feeds into exactly what we should be doing right now in the UK to develop British talent right across the country and this underdeveloped talent in forgotten communities.

“I just wonder whether an idea like the tax deduction for capital could be translated into a super deduction for skills and maybe something like that is a practical example, for the Government to turn their levelling up rhetoric into real action.”

He added: “The only way to get through this cost of living crisis is not to do more tax handouts to pay everybody’s tax bill, to tax the most wealthy, oil companies etc and throttle their investment.

“We’ve got to become more productive so that we earn more. It means we’re gonna have to pay more to our staff and a labour shortage means we’re going to be in a competition for skills, so we’re going to have to pay more and to become more productive.

“We need to unlock talent, and we need to develop skills and develop right across the regions here so that we can produce more for less, be more productive, earn more, pay more for our staff, and that way we’ll deal with the inflationary pressures.

“The cost of living is not going to go away anywhere near as quickly as the Bank of England hopes, and who says that gas or oil prices are going to just come back down again?

“You know, it’s a one way movement, I’m afraid, and we have to compete in a world market here. We need to become more productive, and we need to do that with people.”