Mr. Ian Talbot:

Sometimes I despair at our culture towards entrepreneurship in this country. Entrepreneurs are risk takers and job creators. In the worst of the recession, most entrepreneurs were struggling to pay themselves any sort of living wage. That was in the worst of times. They had to get on with meeting other obligations: taxation, interest, paying their staff the best they could, dealing with redundancies and everything else. They are stressed out, they are anxious, but they are risk takers and they are doing their thing. If they are successful, we charge them an extra 3% taxation. If they are not as successful, if their latest operation does not work out, a safety net is not there in the same way as it is in other jobs. We restrict their allowances. Entrepreneurs are out there doing their thing for the economy and they get better recognition in other countries than they do in this country. Most of the businesses we talk to are struggling to survive. We started this conversation, as Mr. McDonnell pointed out, talking about a handful of people on high salaries but we are here to talk about the cost of doing business for the almost 2.1 million people employed in this country, not a handful of people at the top. That is where our submissions and our synopsis come from.