Treasury startup adviser quits, calls scale-ups a 'sideshow'

The Treasury's entrepreneurship adviser, Alex Depledge, quits on Thursday, one day after Chancellor John Healey delivers his first Budget, after accusing ministers of treating Britain's fastest-growing companies as a "sideshow" while taxpayer money flows to traditional industries. Her exit strips the government of its most senior founder-turned-insider at the precise moment entrepreneurs are lobbying hardest over tax.

Depledge, who founded property technology firm Resi and cleaning marketplace Hassle.com, was appointed by former chancellor Rachel Reeves in June 2025. She told The Sunday Times the treatment of high-growth firms misses their economic weight. "Keeping scale-ups on the fringes underestimates the contribution of our greatest companies, and we need to support and develop them on British shores at all costs", she said. "We treat them as a bit of a sideshow."

The numbers explain her frustration: scale-ups are the rare subset of British companies that add jobs and revenue at compounding rates, yet policy attention, in her account, keeps settling elsewhere. "Where's the real economy? They think it's over here with steel, cars and hard hats, that this is the 'main event'", she said. "And my argument has always been: no, scale-ups are the main event." Ministers have not publicly answered that charge.

What changed after the chancellor's departure?

The July change of chancellor cost Depledge her access and her progress. She held fortnightly meetings with Reeves but said she had "barely any face time" with Healey. The personnel reset also reset the arguments. "With John Healey and Johnny Reynolds, I had to relitigate all the arguments I had already won – and win them again", she said.

That institutional amnesia matters: policy wins without an owner inside the Treasury tend not to survive a reshuffle. Depledge's own track record shows what an embedded adviser can deliver — last year she helped secure an expansion of the Enterprise Management Incentives scheme, which lets growing businesses offer tax-advantaged share options to employees.

What do founders want from Wednesday's Budget?

Depledge declined to disclose the measures she proposed for the Budget but suggested they could include new incentives for company founders. Around her exit, the founder lobby has converged on two asks:

• Protect Business Asset Disposal Relief, which reduces the tax qualifying business owners pay when they sell their companies.
• Introduce tax breaks for entrepreneurs who reinvest the proceeds of business sales into other British companies.

The mood among that constituency is bleak. A survey of 400 scale-up founders by business network Helm found 73 per cent were not at all confident the Budget would be good for business. Roughly three in four of the country's fastest-growing company builders, in other words, expect nothing.

Healey has ruled out an increase in capital gains tax and pledged to back entrepreneurs who take risks and build profitable companies. Pledges, however, are not yet lines in a fiscal statement — and founders will judge Wednesday's document, not the rhetoric around it.

Why does Depledge warn about AI and pensions?

Depledge argued Britain risks missing out on the economic benefits of artificial intelligence unless it moves faster to support domestic technology firms. "We are in grave danger of not having a seat at the table", she said. "The window is 18 months. That's it." No ministry has set out a plan that matches that timetable.

She also called for more pension fund investment in British growth companies, arguing too much domestic capital flows overseas. "There's £3trn of capital sitting there that is not working for our pensioners and it's not working for our high-growth companies", she said. That figure dwarfs annual venture investment into UK startups, which makes the mismatch the sharpest number in the debate.

Her diagnosis predates the current government. Depledge previously told City AM that Britain's startup environment had deteriorated over several years and that founders needed better access to funding and incentives to retain talent. "This has been a slow decline, right? That didn't start with this current government", she said last year.

She said her decision to leave was also driven by a desire to return to business. "At my very core, I'm an entrepreneur", she said. The caveat writes itself: an adviser who returns to founding may judge the Treasury's next moves more harshly, not less, now that she is outside the room. Healey's Budget on Wednesday will show whether the scale-up agenda survives without her.