FARNHAM MP Jeremy Hunt has called on Britain to rediscover its “buccaneering spirit” and take a leaf out of the United States’ book in adopting a more ambitious approach to business.

Speaking at a December meeting of networking club the Farnham Hub, the MP for South West Surrey and Secretary of State for Health said the Government is doing all it can to boost small business while reducing the national deficit.

But he added that for Britain to reclaim its place at the top table of global business, companies must be given the confidence to ditch their fear of failure and “reach for the stars”.

Mr Hunt said: “Britain has the most entrepreneurial culture in Europe, of which we can be really proud. But if you think about the buccaneering spirit we had in the time of the British Empire, somehow I think we have lost some of that.

“One of the problems we have is that once a start-up business becomes medium sized, people in this country tend to sell it quite quickly and buy a nice big house in a place like Farnham.

“That’s a great thing to do and I’d probably do the same. But we need to encourage people to think the job’s not done until their company becomes the biggest and best in the world.

“In America, they have that determination to reach for the stars and it’s not just about money, it’s about ambition and that real determination to turn heads right across the world.

“Google didn’t start here, and in fact we don’t have any massive technology or healthcare companies that started here. That’s where I think we could still do better.”

Mr Hunt, who co-founded educational listings company Hotcourses in 1996 and is the first MP to have run his own business before becoming Health Secretary, added that the Government has tried to support small businesses through various tax-relief schemes.

However, following the recent withdrawal of small business growth vouchers, he expressed scepticism at the effectiveness of such schemes and stated his belief that a low-tax economy is the ultimate way to help businesses flourish.

“To be honest, we’ve got a problem with our entrepreneurial culture if our entrepreneurs are saying to us that we’re only going to start a business up if we have a Government scheme,” he said.

“These schemes can be great but the success of Britain, the fifth largest economy in the world, has got to be about the animal spirits of our entrepreneurs who want to go out there, take risks and start businesses.

“When I started my own business, there were a whole plethora of schemes available. But in the end what I really wanted is low tax rates for the basic taxes that really matter.

“Things like business rates, VAT, employer’s national insurance are absolute killers for small businesses because those are the bills that you have to pay before you’ve even paid a penny of corporation tax.”

Mr Hunt added that the Conservatives’ “general direction of traffic” is toward lowering taxes to boost small businesses in the UK, although he conceded this has taken longer than hoped.

He continued: “We all know the basic truth that economies thrive when you have low tax and light regulation, and economies stutter and stumble when you have high tax and high regulation. We, as a party, obviously want to cut taxes as much as possible.

“We’re not in a period where we’re able to cut taxes as fast as we’d like because we have to deal with the deficit. That’s a big financial risk that we have to avoid. But we are trying really hard and we’ve now cut corporation tax down to 20 per cent which is the lowest in the G7.

“We’re heading in the right direction and the World Bank recently said that we are the sixth most competitive country in the world to do business. We are moving up the rankings and we want to get into the top five.”