Aug
12
Written by:
iptadmin
8/12/2011 12:28 PM
The study combined an investigation into politicians' careers with a survey of business opinion from 50 leading international companies to produce a Business Index of the six main legislatures:
Business Index Rankings:
| Ranking |
Legislature |
| 1 |
House of Lords |
| 2 |
House of Commons |
| 3 |
Scottish Parliament |
| 4 |
Northern Ireland Assembly |
| 5 |
Welsh Assembly |
| 6 |
European Parliament |
The index combines a score given by business leaders to each legislature showing its perceived sympathy towards business and combines this with the proportion of members of each institution who have five years of more business management and finance experience.
| Ranking |
Legislature |
Five years or more business experience |
Ten years or more business experience |
Score out of 5 for sympathy to business (1=unsympathetic, 5=sympathetic) |
| 1 |
House of Lords |
29% |
24% |
3.30 |
| 2 |
House of Commons |
21% |
13% |
3.02 |
| 3 |
Scottish Parliament |
9% |
7% |
2.96 |
| 4 |
Northern Ireland Assembly |
3% |
3% |
3.00 |
| 5 |
Welsh Assembly |
5% |
3% |
2.84 |
| 6 |
European Parliament |
9% |
5% |
2.81 |
Of the business leaders surveyed, 39% said that the European Parliament is either very or fairly unsympathetic to business. This correlates with the finding that only 9% of the European Parliament have had five years or more business management or finance experience.
The House of Lords on the other hand, is both deemed to be more sympathetic to business (only 9% of business leaders said that it is unsympathetic) and contains by far the largest proportion of members with five years or more business management or finance experience at 29%.
The overall proportion of business management or finance experience in our legislatures, at an average of 13%, appears low in light of the fact that 80% of the UK workforce is employed in the private sector. What is certain is that business leaders are dissatisfied, with 79% agreeing that "there are too few politicians in each of the main UK and pan-European legislative bodies with proper business experience".
86% of business leaders say that "too often, legislation is passed with insufficient regard to its impact on business".
Download a copy of the Research paper to read the full findings.