SMALL businesses will play a key role in rebalancing the economy and helping reduce the deficit. To help achieve this, small business needs to be given the confidence to invest and help increase job creation. Therefore, it is vital the Government puts a Small Business Programme for Growth into action immediately.

Research by the Federation of Small Businesses shows small firms are at tipping point and lack the confidence to take on the 500,000 people who will be made redundant from the public sector as a result of the Government’s Comprehensive Spending Review cuts.

So it is up to the Government to incentivise the small business community – through extending the National Insurance contribution holiday to existing firms and cutting VAT to five per cent in the construction sector – to promote growth and help small firms take on new staff.

The spending review announced cuts of nearly £7bn to councils across the UK. Small businesses in the North-East will have some concerns about the big reductions in local authority spending. A huge number of our members supply local authorities and we are concerned that many will be frozen out in future.

We want to see local authorities committing to continue to spend on small businesses across the region.

Lynne Hammond, North-East Policy Unit Secretary, Federation of Small Businesses, Middlesbrough.

WE were expecting it and it happened. The coalition Government, headed by those caring Tories, sent a shockwave throughout Great Britain.

Nearly 500,000 jobs to be axed in the public sector, welfare cuts, retirement age prolonged and police funds axed. There is much more I could write about, but I think that readers are already too depressed.

What baffles me is that after all of this we are still fully committed to sending billions of pounds overseas for international aid, yet we seem hellbent on destroying our own citizens with the fat cats and other countries being the only ones who will benefit from these proposals.

I was only a child when Margaret Thatcher was in power and all I remember her for is taking away my school milk and the destruction of the miners. It appears the Tories have changed a little, just as they wanted us to believe, but their only modification is that this time they intend to take everything away from the less fortunate of our society – and not just our lunchtime refreshments.

We needed changes in the system, that I do agree with, but once again it will be the needy and manual workers who take the flak while the rich mob get fatter.

Christopher Wardell, Darlington.

THE loss of up to 500,000 jobs in the public sector under the Government’s spending review will be very hard on those who bear the brunt.

It is not only those who work in the public sector facing unemployment who will be affected, but also those who rely upon the services they provide.

There is a perception that the state is too big and needs to be reduced in size, but the prospect is of removal of essential jobs that will not be replaced.

These are not high paid jobs; those working in social care are often having to rely on tax credits to survive. Many will now be pushed into poverty.

But what can we expect from a Conservative-led coalition?

Ideologically, a menu of cuts, favouring higher unemployment over tax increases, is typically Conservative – the camouflage of the Big Society masking the misery.

There are echoes of previous Conservative governments and the divisive and savage impact on communities.

Oh yes, and what of the bankers? No losses here in jobs and bonus payments. The rich are continuing to get richer and the poorer facing the reality of hardship. Not a pretty picture.

Bernie Walsh, Coxhoe, Durham.