London Briefing/Chris Johns: The Confederation of British Industry's 27th annual conference took place at the start of this week and was preceded by the now familiar moans and gripes at the government.

The CBI is deeply concerned about increasing regulation, the ever rising tax burden and the decline in attractiveness of Britain as a place in which to do business.

On company taxes, the CBI produced some intriguing comparisons between Britain and its top five trading partners (in which list the CBI includes Ireland).

Compared to the US, France, Holland, Germany and Ireland, only French companies are more heavily taxed then their British counterparts, according to the CBI data.

However, a closer examination of that data suggests the argument is not nearly as clear-cut as the CBI suggests. There are all sorts of "funnies" in the numbers that make comparisons rather dubious. Irish readers will know all about the reasons why the corporate tax take, as a share of GDP, is roughly the same in Britain and Ireland, despite a British rate of corporation tax more than double the Irish rate.

In Germany, with its large Mittelstand group of small, often self-employed businesses, corporate taxes look low because many businesses are not corporations - the owners pay income taxes, not profit taxes.

The CBI would be on stronger ground if it had merely concentrated on the fact that the tax burden on profits under New Labour has undoubtedly risen and, given Gordon Brown's deteriorating fiscal arithmetic, looks like rising again. Higher company taxes have an obvious appeal to the left, but the role of the CBI should be to point out the reality that such taxes mean lower wages, less investment and higher unemployment.

The CBI also published a survey of 251 senior British executives which attempted to gauge whether the UK is a good place to do business. Two-thirds of these executives seem to believe that the government "places a low priority on delivering a truly favourable business climate".

Business believes that New Labour has steadily become more hostile, with 75 per cent of bosses saying that the situation is worse now compared to five years ago. I wonder whether all of this has more to do with the fact that the global business environment is tougher today - the world economy was booming five years ago.

Naturally enough, these and similar survey findings were talked up by the CBI and by most of the media. As with the claims about higher taxes, I'm not sure that the argument is quite so robust under close examination.

First, there is the fact that 76 per cent of businessmen still think Britain is an attractive place to do business - an absolute test rather that a relative question.

In addition, 59 per cent of business people still plan to invest in Britain over the next couple of years and a similar percentage expect to do so abroad. So businesses seem to be planning to expand their domestic and overseas operations at almost exactly the same rate. Nothing too alarmist there, one might have thought.

The three main drivers for choosing the country of investment are, first, the availability of a trained and skilled workforce, second, the flexibility of work practices and, third, the quality of the telecommunications infrastructure.

The UK scored quite highly on all three, which is a hopeful sign. What was also good was the fact that the quality of the transport infrastructure, while important, is not at the top of the list of requirements. If anybody bases their investment plans on the quality of our road and rail network we know we don't have a hope.

It is, of course, the modern way to play fast and loose with data, to sex-up bodies of evidence. Mentally, we automatically "seasonally adjust" all special interest claims, even ones that are said to be evidence based. The CBI would serve its members better by simply presenting the facts and offering an uncontroversial assessment of them. I fancy the message would be much clearer, and seem much louder, as a result.

The message seems to be that corporate taxes have risen to European levels, we enjoy European style regulation thanks to the increasing adoption of European law and our workforce stands up to European comparisons.

That's all fine for competing with Europe, for being part of Europe. All that's missing now is the euro. But it is hopeless when competing against US and, increasingly, Asian companies. The CBI should focus on the remaining competitive strengths and demand that the government does nothing to erode them further.