Business leaders say No 10 has stopped listening to them. This may be a sensible time to start

It might be tempting, if you are sitting in Downing Street, to dismiss the current pre-budget howls from big business beasts as standard stuff from the usual suspects.

- Nils Pratley

Archie Norman, the Marks & Spencer chairman who told the Telegraph the government's workers' rights proposals were "a political indulgence that the country cannot afford", is a former Tory MP. Stuart Rose, who told the Times that "I believe we're genuinely at the edge of a crisis", is a Tory peer.

Rain Newton-Smith, boss of the CBI, is the country's top business lobbyist. It should not be remotely surprising that she's pleading for business to be spared more taxes in the budget, even if her argument in the Guardian also carried the provocative advice to Rachel Reeves to rethink Labour's manifesto pledges on tax.

The problem, though, is that these grumbles plainly go deeper - well beyond the employment rights package. Talk privately to FTSE 100 and 250 executives and you'll hear consistent themes: that ministers, despite their pre-election schmoozing to woo the business vote, don't "get" business; that the government has stopped listening; and that key decisions are fluffed, or take too long.