Nearly three-quarters of Scottish mid-market back staying in the EU - BDO

Following the Prime Minister’s negotiation with the European Council, 73 per cent of Scotland’s mid-market firms surveyed (those with revenue of between £10m and £300m) want to stay in Europe under David Cameron’s new terms which is more than the 65 per cent which want to stay in Europe across the rest of the UK. A similar percentage also believed that leaving the EU would make it harder to run a successful business.

Latest figures from BDO show that there are over 2000 mid-market firms in Scotland employing 440,000 people.

The mid-market is politically and economically important to the UK. While making up only 1 per cent of all UK companies, these firms create 1 in 4 private sector jobs and are responsible for around one third of the UK’s total revenue (over £1tn a year).

Martin Gill, Head of BDO LLP in Scotland, said: “These figures reveal, what I suspect a lot of people already knew, that the Scottish business community is broadly in favour of remaining within the EU. Not that they don’t have issues with the EU and the way in which it is run but clearly these businesses are of a size and scale where they will be more likely to be involved in exporting and developing international markets and consequently they will be keen to keep all doors open for trade.”

For these businesses the three most important issues for reforming the EU was ‘cutting red tape and the gold-plating of EU legislation i.e. adopting regulatory off-setting for every new EU regulation another EU regulation is removed’ (61 per cent); followed by ‘focusing more of the EU’s time on improving trade around the world such as the EU-US trade deal and developing links with high priority markets such as India’ (50 per cent); and ‘liberalising markets making it easier to trade across Europe’ (46 per cent). If these changes were made the number of firms which support remaining in the EU rises to 77 per cent.

Mr Gill concluded: “Our survey clearly finds the EU wanting in many ways and businesses are frustrated by the bureaucracy and any intervention of free trade by the Union is obviously disruptive. However, most business owners are keen to engage with the EU in any reform. But for others the EU remains unsupportable under any conditions.

One business surveyed said: “I am only interested in complete withdrawal.” However, this is not the majority view who see the EU as beneficial to business growth. I think there will be considerable debate in the coming months but it is interesting to find substantial Scottish businesses are keen to maintain membership of the EU albeit with some changes to the way it operates.”

The data is part of BDO’s New Economy campaign which includes a set of policy proposals developed by BDO aimed at putting the entrepreneurial mid-market at the heart of the UK’s economy.

The full set of BDO’s policy proposals can be found at: www.bdo.co.uk/neweconomy