Sir Rocco: Business is being used as a cash cow

SIR Rocco Forte has criticised Rishi Sunak’s Government for its lack of vision and said it is using business as a ‘cow they can milk’.

The successful hotelier – one of Britain’s most recognised entrepreneurs – said plans unveiled this month to hike taxes as Britain enters a recession are ‘completely counterintuitive’ and would lead to a more severe downturn.

Raising corporation tax is a ‘fundamental mistake’, he said.

He also slammed plans to freeze tax thresholds which he said risks removing the incentive for middleearners to work hard.

The Mail on Sunday has calculated that freezing thresholds for an extra two years – a stealth tax – will siphon more than £50billion in additional taxes from workers by 2028.

‘What element of encouragement is to be found there for the ideal of free enterprise? What motivation is there to strive and endeavour?’ he said in an opinion piece published in full this weekend on The Mail+.

Forte said the scrapping of plans for Enterprise Zones is also ‘damaging’. He added: ‘There is simply no vision whatsoever for the future.’

Forte raised concerns that Brexit is being ‘challenged’ and that ‘before we know what has happened we will find ourselves back in the European Union’.

He said: ‘I operate in the European Union, and things are even bleaker there than they are here.’ He said: ‘We are told we are now in the hands of the grown-ups. I know plenty of grown-ups who have never achieved anything in their lives, who have had no ambition and been prepared to go along with the flow.

‘There were plenty of grown-ups in the 1970s when the country was in a bigger mess than it is in today.

‘It took a visionary to come along and change it. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a Mrs Thatcher around today.’