Business commentator Martin Vander Weyer told GCA conference delegates he would came down on the side of cautious optimism despite the economic and political challenges the UK faces.

Vander Weyer, who is business editor of The Spectator, said that, although the banks were behaving better while they re-built their balance sheets, their cautious approach to lending was creating opportunities for alternatives like peer to peer lenders and crowd funding.

Interest rates, he felt would not be rising any time soon and when they did might reach only 2.5% at most.

He urged businesses to join the campaign to reform business rates to create a system that would reduce the burden on businesses and as a result increase tax revenues.

The UK, he said, was still not building enough houses, partly due to a skills shortage.

He believed Britain could have done without an EU in-or-out referendum at this moment. The “out” campaign had created a “hard-core vituperative argument”.  “Brexit is a distraction and we don’t need it,” he said.