Ben Parkinson, Managing Director & Co-Founder, Blue Hat: “The increased investment in infrastructure could improve venues and transport networks, making it easier to host and attend corporate events and offsite meetings. It may also attract international attendees into the UK, bringing more and larger events, with higher budgets. This is a longer term view as any impact won’t be experienced for months/years.

“The economy is expected to grow faster than previously expected and with inflation subsiding, will mean corporate clients will ease the purse strings a bit. This should mean more investment in their people (team building and team development events) and/or larger budgets at existing events they already run each year. If consumers have more money to spend, then they’ll spend it with big business and these increased profits should trickle down to corporate events. We have already seen a noticeable uplift in business in this last quarter, that shows no signs of abating, so maybe it’s the increased confidence in the economic outlook already taking effect. Long may it continue!

“One of the big headlines – the increase in employers NI and the reduction in the threshold is a bit of a double whammy. On the one hand, it’s a clever way to get big corporations to pay their taxes as it’s surely harder to fudge PAYE payments (than corporate tax liability – I read the other day that multinationals pay on average only 8% Corporation Tax when all is said and done). And we do have a massive black hole to fill having given away so much with the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (furlough to you and me) and we will have to pay for that at some point.