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4.1 Business leaders believe that powers needto flow back to member statesBritish business is very clear: the status quo is unacceptable. In a recent survey of Europeanbusiness leaders, 58 per cent stated that they were pessimistic that European industrywould be cost competitive compared to other main countries like the US, China or Russia inthree years’ time. 157 Successive surveys and polls have shown that British businesses want tosee powers return to the member states.It is important to emphasise that there is a lot of debate among various organisations abouthow much of a change is needed. During interviews and surveys certain organisationssuggested to the authors that the UK should consider leaving the EU. Others said that Britainshould remain inside the EU but that some repatriation of powers could be beneficial. TheBritish Ceramic Confederation, for example, has argued that “in certain instances it couldappear to be desirable to restore the balance of competence from the EU to the UK” but hasnoted that “a key concern is the level of UK resources (including financial and expertise), thatwould be available to implement this effectively.” 158Business for Britain was set up to accurately reflect the views and opinions of UK businessleaders when it comes to the EU. In light of the very different views and opinions that havebeen put forward by different bodies (but noting the overwhelming demand for changesin the current relationship with the EU) it was decided that independent research had tobe done to assess businesses attitudes. One of the abiding issues with drawing too heavilyfrom previous surveys is that the majority of research purporting to represent the views ofbusiness is drawn from membership surveys of trade associations. These surveys are notuseful as the respondents are chosen from a pre-defined panel of members and thereforecannot claim to be providing an accurate and impartial reflection of overall British businessopinion.In order to get a more comprehensive idea of attitudes towards the EU across company size,sector and location, Business for Britain commissioned YouGov to conduct a representativepoll of 1,000 business leaders based in the United Kingdom on what they thought aboutBritain’s membership of the EU. This poll aimed to be as fair and accurate reflection ofBritish business as possible. As a result we oversampled the number of medium and largecompanies (our poll was weighted 70 per cent small, 15 per cent medium and 15 per centlarge, whereas the official BIS classification is 97 per cent small, 2.5 per cent medium and 0.5per cent large) and we also oversampled the number of exporting businesses, around halfthe respondents in our poll exported overseas. 159 This allows us to also specifically analysethe view of British manufacturers, the group who have been most adversely affected byhigh energy prices.Energy Policyand the EU157 Accenture, Unlocking industrial opportunities, p.22, found at 158 British Ceramic Confederation, Response to the call for evidence on the Government’s review of the balance of competences,17 January 2014159 See the full paper Britain and the EU: What Business Thinks at
41 per cent of British manufacturers said that they would vote for Britain to leave theEU, 53 per cent said that they would vote to stay. When asked, 53 per cent of our pollingrespondents said that they thought that the costs of Single Market regulation outweighedthe benefits of being part of the EU, only 37 per cent thought that benefits outweighed thecosts, as can be seen in Table 5:Table 5: Views on the costs and benefits of the EUWhich statement best reflects your view: the costs of complying with EU Single Marketregulation outweighs the benefits of being in the EU, or the benefits of being in the EUoutweighs the costs of complying with EU Single Market regulation? (%)All businessesManufacturingCosts outweigh benefits 46 53Benefits outweigh costs 37 38Neither 8 5Don't know 10 9The evidence from our polls and interviews showed that people thought that the mainproblem with the current terms of EU membership was the large volume of EU regulation.While the leaders of large companies were most likely to say that the benefits of the SingleMarket outweighed the costs, small business leaders in particular were overwhelminglyopposed to the current situation.In our poll we asked manufacturing business leaders to decide whether they thought the EUor the UK Government should be in control of key policy areas currently under the purviewof the European Union, the results are provided in Figure 25.Figure 25: Views on the balance of competences47
Page 2: Business for Britain exists to give
Page 9: In a recent letter to the President
Page 14 and 15: in the US. While this would be conc
Page 16 and 17: This divergence is not confined to
Page 18 and 19: Commission has itself acknowledged
Page 20 and 21: 2.4The rising costs of EU energy re
Page 22 and 23: It is important to note that many o
Page 24 and 25: 3.1The impact of high energy costs
Page 26 and 27: MetalsTOTAL UK EMPLOYMENT471,000 in
Page 28: Chemicals and chemical productsTOTA
Page 31 and 32: INDUSTRY CASE STUDY 3.1.3Figure 14:
Page 39 and 40: “Energy discussions play a major
Page 41 and 42: were also closing faster than expec
Page 43 and 44: Increased energy dependence3.6Anoth
Page 45: Despite these problems, the EU’s
Page 49 and 50: genuine, efficient and effective in
Page 51 and 52: The EU should also make it clear th
Page 53 and 54: should be considered: were the UK t
Page 55 and 56: Conclusion5The EU’s energy policy
Page 57 and 58: Table 8: All energy Impact Assessme
Page 59 and 60: IA TitleImpact Assessment: Amendmen
Page 61: “Energy Policy and the EU is a ti

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