Entrepreneurs are today waiting to hear if Chancellor Alistair Darling is prepared to backtrack on his controversial plan to scrap the capital gains tax taper relief and bring a basic rate of 18 per cent.

Mr Darling will follow Prime Minister Gordon Brown on to the rostrum at the Confederation of British Industry's annual conference.

His audience at the Business Design Centre in London will consist of several hundred hard-nosed businessmen keen to discover whether New Labour's pro-business credentials are still valid.

CBI director-general Richard Lambert said last night that Mr Brown, in his first speech to the country's biggest business lobby group as Prime Minister, had "ticked all the right boxes" by addressing concerns about skills, planning and infrastructure.

"But we're still waiting to see whether the Chancellor will go back on the changes to capital gains tax," he said.

Mr Darling used his Pre-Budget report on October 9 to announce a surprise change to CGT and the taper relief system that reduced tax on some business assets to ten per cent. The plan is to introduce a flat rate of 18 per cent; an effective increase of 80 per cent.

It has already resulted in West Midland businessmen David Grove and Tim Watts either selling assets or cutting investment plans to avoid the higher rate.

"I don't think it's deliberately anti-business, but it's an area of judgement where I think they got it wrong," Mr Lambert said. "I'll be very interested to hear what the Chancellor has got to say."

Mr Brown yesterday promised sweeping welfare reforms to improve Britain's skills base. And he warned that millions of workers face being left on the scrap heap.

The Prime Minister set out moves to help the out-of-work to undertake training and the unskilled to improve their promotion prospects. He also said he would press ahead with controversial moves to expand Heathrow airport, stick with the £16 billion Crossrail scheme, build new nuclear power stations, and streamline the planning system.

"Just as we are modernising transport, planning, science policy, we are redefining the Britain welfare state for a wholly new world - to give people skills through transferring resources from welfare to education," he said.

The "old system" no longer met the "aspirational society" Britain needs to be.

"Let us face facts - as a result of changes in the global economy, many of the jobs British workers do now are becoming redundant," he said. "Of today's six million unskilled workers in Britain, we will soon need only half a million - over five million fewer.

"We have nine million highly qualified workers in Britain, but the challenge of the next ten years is that we will need 14 million - five million more."

The Prime Minister said he had asked Skills Secretary John Denham and Work and Pensions Secretary Peter Hain to create a new alliance of businesses, colleges and the education and voluntary sectors to drive forward the necessary changes.

"If, in the old days, lack of jobs demanded priority action, in the new world it is lack of skills," Mr Brown said.

A spokesman for Birmingham Chamber of Commerce and Industry said a commitment to rethink the CGT changes would show that Mr Darling was listening to the concerns of business.

At Coventry and Warwickshire Chamber, Alan Durham said: "Gordon Brown's statement had aspects which were encouraging for businesses and he rightly recognised that education, energy and the environment are all essential to the prosperity of business in this country."