Roger Trapp: British companies can make their mark - but not without Brown's backing

It is a good bet that in what is expected to be his last Budget speech later this month Chancellor Gordon Brown will once again seek to establish his credentials as a promoter of enterprise. Indeed, the word has become almost as popular in his lexicon as prudence.

The trouble for Brown is that, try as he might to insist that enterprise is a central part of his political philosophy, few people in business appear to be convinced. Only the other day, yet another survey (see briefs, opposite) found proprietors of small businesses complaining about not being understood by the Government. "They haven't a clue about real business life," was one comment included in the study produced by a new magazine for growing businesses in association with the internet company Cisco. Seventy-one per cent said the Government was not doing enough to support small businesses, with the costs and frustrations associated with bureaucracy, or "red tape", among the biggest causes of upset and disappointment.

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HOWEVER, ANOTHER study - by the software company Sage - found last year that red tape was a particular issue for older businesses. Younger enterprises seemed more inclined just to get on and try to expand.

A wonderful example of this is Fraser Doherty, an 18-year-old from Edinburgh whose range of "healthy jams" is just going on sale in a national supermarket chain. Doherty began making and selling jams from his grandmother's secret recipes when he was just 14. He soon had a roaring business as demand at farmers' markets and delis across Scotland led him to produce up to 1,000 jars a week in his parents' tiny kitchen.

But, while he was being deluged with orders, Doherty saw that jam sales in general were declining. Realising that this was largely because jam was seen as exceptionally unhealthy, he began to experiment with low-sugar products, ending up with the SuperJams range of "no added sugar fruit spreads" that is going on sale in Waitrose.

His trick has been to retain the natural taste associated with traditional jams but update it by using "super fruits", such as blueberries (which are said to reduce cholesterol), and sweetening the product with grape juice rather than refined sugars or artificial sweeteners. And an advertising agency has come up with a modern packaging style.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Doherty has become an ambassador for the Make Your Mark campaign, which was founded by the British Chambers of Commerce, the CBI, the Federation of Small Businesses and the Institute of Directors with the aim of promoting an enterprise culture in the UK. It works with many other organisations, including The Prince's Trust, Business in the Community and the Learning and Skills Council, and is supported by the DTI and personally endorsed by the Chancellor. Doherty's role is to help spread the word about enterprise by talking to school pupils and other young people about his experiences in the hope of encouraging them to follow him.

IT MIGHT ALL sound a bit overplanned for many traditional business owners, but the Make Your Mark campaign claims that it is working. It has just released research indicating that its initiatives, such as Enterprise Week, which takes place with events around the country in November, are having a significant impact on the attitudes and behaviours of British young people.

Moreover, the same study suggests an increasing proportion of young people feel they have the personal qualities to become entrepreneurs.

Perhaps more surprisingly, the campaign is supposedly inspiring the setting up of similar initiatives in - of all places - the US, which is traditionally lauded for its entrepreneurial spirit, and India, which has lately shown itself to be nimble and flexible enough to become the back-office capital of the world.

Kevin Steele, chief executive of the Make Your Mark campaign, admitted that exporting Enterprise Week to the US was "a bit like selling ice to the Eskimos". But he added that increasing globalisation meant that encouraging enterprise networks across national boundaries would be essential.

That all sounds great, and last week's first Entrepreneurship Week in the US must have given Steele a warm glow. But it looks like another example of Americans not resting on their laurels and instead striving to become even better.

Meanwhile, many British business owners feel that the challenges lay a little closer to home. For all their criticisms of the lack of support from the Government, the 500 small business proprietors questioned in the study by Cisco and Accelerator magazine overwhelmingly prefer Britain to continental Europe as a place in which to do business. Judging from the number of eastern Europeans working in all walks of life in Britain, mainland Europe is not lacking citizens with enterprise.

So Britain cannot assume it will always have this advantage. Exporting campaigns such as Make Your Mark is one thing, making sure enterprise is really flourishing and encouraged to develop is quite another.

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