By Alex Brummer,Editor

Copyright dailymail

The British Venture Capital Association (BVCA) – scene of Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ latest effort to kickstart a ‘stuck’ economy – is a curious mix.

It is home to the venture capitalists critical to taking trailblazing UK companies to the next stage.

Yet the failure of Britain to seed, maintain and grow any high-tech or AI leader, float it on the London market and grow into Silicon Valley-style industry leaders points to the failure of private capital.

The notable escapees, with the complicity of Whitehall and ineffectual business secretaries, are legion.

Arm Holdings is the biggest loss, but other departures include Deep Minds (owned by Alphabet), Darktrace, Inmarsat and a host of defence firms such as Ultra Electronics.

And with each exit goes intellectual property, patents and expertise, developed with taxpayer help at Britain’s great research universities.

Venture capital is the positive stuff which the BVCA members do. But it is also home to the private equity ghouls who buy up great companies and load them with debt, and spit them out again.

Advent’s speedy break-up of aerospace pioneer Cobham, with the loss to the UK of its world-leading flight refuelling tech, is a case in point.

Private equity ownership of supermarkets Asda and Morrisons has made them also-rans in the battle for grocery market share.

Surging costs for veterinary services is the result of the domination of the industry by private capital.

Ministry of Defence housing, Debenhams, Southern Cross and much else have been vandalised by the bigger beasts. Barely a day passes without private equity discovering targets.

Enterprises currently being gobbled up include legal practices, real estate, data centres, NHS surgeries and financial advisory services and platforms.

Remarkably, private equity barons enjoy fantastic tax privileges through ‘carried interest’.

This enables them to escape more punitive income and corporation taxes and allows super-rich incomers, such as Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman, to spend £100million revamping a country home.

Government data shows tens of billions of pounds of foreign plundering of assets this year.

The National Security and Investment Act was meant to end the desecration. Reeves, the latest Business Secretary Peter Kyle and their advisers need to wake up and smell the coffee.

Pharma giant Merck’s cancellation of a £1billion research centre in Britain should come as a warning for Health Secretary Wes Streeting and the Government.

The stupidity of punishing medicine makers, by sharply raising the levy on sales to the NHS, has been exposed.

The charge is on an ever-upward trajectory, rising from 15.5 per cent to 24.7 per cent and heading towards 32 per cent.

The £7billion or so of income generated for the NHS might seem like a blessing. But if it chases away the UK’s innovative life sciences sector, the nation is doomed.

AstraZeneca, having pulled out of a vaccine plant in Liverpool, is proposing to spend £37billion in the years ahead in the US. Some of this could have come to Britain.

Pharmaceutical trade group ABPI warns that a sector, in which Britain excels, is ruling itself out as a good place to invest. There has been much focus on the sector’s growing disenchantment.

In addition, British firms regularly are being absorbed by overseas rivals and private equity.

Verona, which specialises in compounds for pulmonary disease, recently was bought by Merck for £7.4billion.

Abcam, maker of antibodies, was swallowed by America’s Danaher for £4.2billion and barely a day passes without smaller pharma and biotech companies being snaffled.

A Government spending billions on bailing out sunset industries such as steel is oblivious to the erosion of Britain’s leadership in science-based pharma.

Peter principle

At A dinner hosted by a City figure some years ago, my wife Tricia found herself seated next to Peter Mandelson, who asked what she did for a living.

She said she was puppeteer working mainly in education and museums. Mandelson speedily turned his back on her and conversation died for the evening.

There was no smell of dollar bills…