Things are still pretty tough out there, so any help or encouragement the government can offer businesses is gratefully received.

Things are still pretty tough out there, so any help or encouragement the government can offer businesses is gratefully received.

However, ministers sometimes seem to be more keen to give the impression they are helping than actually do anything.

A case in point is the “Start-Up Britain” campaign, launched with great fanfare at the end of March. The Chancellor, George Osborne, called this in his Budget ‘a new campaign by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs… that will help people start and grow businesses’.

The centrepiece of the campaign is the Start-Up Britain website, which is devilishly hard to find (Googling “Start-Up Britain” will not even get you close) and has precious little content of its own, merely dozens of links to other sites.

There’s also a collection of offers from various service providers, who appear to be the main beneficiaries of this campaign. The offers range from ‘1,000 free copies of a Start-Up Guide e-book’, to ‘one month’s free line rental… while stocks last’.

But my personal favourite has to be, ‘20 per cent off prescription glasses for anyone starting up new businesses’. Helpful for some, perhaps, but hardly putting fuel in the tank of UK enterprise. And that’s it.

There’s talk of other initiatives, such as a ‘pledge matchmaker’, which allows you to ‘step up to invest your resources in other oganisations’ [sic] enterprise initiatives’; an events calendar; and a ‘mentor marketplace’. All these things duplicate what other sites are already doing.

I’ve only discussed this in depth because it seems to sum up everything that is wrong with the government’s attitude to supporting SMEs.

In 1992, when the business secretary of the time, Michael Heseltine, launched Business Link, there was serious intent behind it. It was flawed, but it could at least stake a claim to be a useful source of information and help. But this government has already decided it is too expensive.

We put in a call to the Department for Business and they insist that Start-Up Britain has been launched without the use of public money. It’s good that the beleaguered taxpayer will not have to foot the bill for it, but it does illustrate the principle that you get what you pay for.

More importantly, it raises the question of why the government is endorsing this site, and the service providers which are effectively advertising on it – mostly big businesses.