Context: The UK presents as a lightly-regulated and broadly unplanned economy. This raises important questions at a time when ¬£billions are being spent to, in effect, preserve/ossify an existing private sector economy in its present state of largely unplanned evolution. Essentially, we cannot know / have not sought to know/ if many such supported enterprises have a post-COVID future nor have we made value judgements on their intrinsic long-term worth. We might even, post-EU, revert to our past concerns over Mergers and Monopolies and become less preoccupied by all out competition in free but not always fair ‚’markets‚’. All we currently know is that the economy is structured as it is. Deciding in a more thoughtful manner what we might want our post-Brexit economy to look like is a massive task ‚’ but one worth raising as background to my proposal. Topically, the business media currently anticipates that Private Equity could be planning a swoop on strategic UK businesses weakened by the present crisis. Problem: My more specific and manageable concern is that financial support is alleged to have been obtained by newly-invented ‚’fake‚’ enterprises. Regrettably, such criminals could also be behind online scams which are often made convincing because they use accounts at UK banks. The latter immediately suggests that we should always have been more closely ensuring ‚’fit and proper‚’ ownership ‚’ and much greater preparedness to query to whom public monies are disbursed. As other disruptions can predicted in the future, we desperately need to know which businesses are legitimately operating in this country. An adjunct risk is that we might strategically support sectors only to see them disappear as many sectors have done since World War Two. Academics can surely research which types of businesses have the best long-run survival rates.
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