“The government should support losers” as well as obvious winners, declared MP Sion Simon, addressing the British Venture Capital Association’s Technology Spin-out Conference 2007 in London on October 29th.
He then went on to explain that he meant that the government should be prepared to back more risky ventures, because, “The private sector is very averse to risk”.
Mr Simon, who is Chair of the All Party Group on Private Equity and Venture Capital, and is the Labour Member of Parliament for Birmingham, Erdington also said that his constituency, “Has an effective rate of worklessness of 40 per cent…..It’s about education, a strong stable economy. It’s about science. The notion that Britons cannot be entrepreneurs is de facto wrong” but “We are not as successful as we were”.
He went on, “The government should commit more and invest more in private enterprise education. I have tried to tell them but they don’t listen. Only 8 per cent of my constituents go to any kind of higher education at all. These [other] people - the 92 per cent, need to be entrepreneurs as well”.
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