Business Rates

Thursday 29th January 2026 Lords Chamber

Statement

12:03

The following Statement was made in the House of Commons on Tuesday 27 January.

“This Government want the best for Britain’s high streets. We know how central they are to the strength and vibrancy of our villages, towns and cities. We know how hard small business owners work, and we know how badly they were let down by the previous Government: shops were shuttered, council funding was cut, and business rates were left totally unreformed. We will not let decline continue, and we are already taking steps to arrest it.

We are protecting high street businesses from upward-only rent review clauses, and we are introducing a strong new community right to buy to help communities safeguard valued community assets, such as pubs and shops on their high streets. We are pushing ahead with high street rental auctions, which are helping to bring long-term empty shops back into use. Where premises have been vacant for too long, councils can auction the right to rent them; they can offer one- to five-year leases to new businesses and community groups, helping to create more vibrant high streets. We also launched the winter of action to combat retail crime—a nationwide crackdown on crime and anti-social behaviour to protect shoppers and retail workers.

As well as that, we are investing in local communities through the £5 billion Pride in Place programme announced last September, and we are investing to support growth, including through the new local growth fund. Around one in three businesses continue to benefit from small business rates relief and do not pay any business rates at all, and 85,000 benefit from reduced business rates as this relief tapers. At the Budget, we extended the small business rates relief second property grace period for another two years, which is a really important change; it means that businesses expanding into a second property will retain the support as they grow.

We know that there is more to do. Before I turn to today’s announcements, I want to run through the three main components of the changes to business rates that are taking place in April for all businesses, and to explain the steps that the Government took at the Budget last year on business rates. The first change is the underlying, significant reforms to the system that the Chancellor set out as part of our commitment to transform business rates in England over this Parliament. We have implemented permanently lower multipliers for eligible retail, hospitality and leisure properties; the multiplier will fall by around 12p, or 25%, on 1 April. Some of this is a result of the overall reduction in multipliers between revaluation periods, but the further 5p reduction announced by the Chancellor is, on its own, worth nearly £1 billion for the 750,000 retail, hospitality and leisure businesses that are the lifeblood of our high streets.

We are paying for this support for the high street through higher rates on the top 1% most expensive properties. That includes many large distribution warehouses, such as those used by online retail giants. Let us be crystal clear: before our reforms, a mid-sized high street business faced the same multiplier or tax rate as a warehouse used by an online giant—that was the system we were left with. Now, the mid-sized high street business will pay around 38p in the pound, and the large warehouse will pay around 51p in the pound. That is 33% more. This is a sizeable reform, and it is here for good.

The second component of business rates announced at the Budget was the revaluation. All non-domestic properties are revalued independently every three years for business rates purposes. New valuations will come into effect in April. I thank the independent valuers in the Valuation Office Agency who carry out the work. The Government did not take the easy approach of kicking the post-Covid revaluation into the long grass. Instead, we introduced a significant transitional support package, because we knew that some sectors were seeing large increases in their rateable values after the pandemic. We are capping bill increases in each of the next three years for those with the largest rises, and we are spending a total of £4.3 billion on that and other interventions.

The Government recognise that the rateable value of hotels has increased significantly since the pandemic, so our caps on increases are particularly important for them, but it is right that we look at this further. We will therefore review the way that hotels are valued, to ensure that it accurately reflects the market for this sector.

The third important context is the tapering away of the temporary pandemic relief for high street businesses. The previous Government went into the election with plans to withdraw that relief overnight in 2025. That would have been a harsh and sharp removal of support, pushing up bills for independent high street businesses overnight by 300%. That is reckless and irresponsible. Instead, we have taken a different approach. We extended the retail, hospitality and leisure relief this year—it is set at 40%—and we are unwinding it over the coming years. The jumping-off point for any business currently receiving a 40% discount is its current bill, not its bill without relief.

The Budget decisions led to the following outcomes. First, for over half of ratepayers, bills will be flat or will fall next year. Secondly, of the properties whose bills will increase from 1 April, most will see their increases capped at 15% or less, or at £800 for the smallest. Thirdly, bills will adjust to new valuations, but because of our caps, this will happen gradually, and high street businesses will benefit from permanently reduced multipliers for the long term. That is a fair and reasonable approach. As set out at the Budget, in total we are spending over £4 billion in the next three years to limit the scale of bill increases for those who are either losing reliefs or seeing their rateable values increase.

In the coming financial year, because of our interventions, the business rates system will raise the same amount of revenue as it was forecast to raise in spring 2025, before the Budget—not billions and billions more, as Opposition Members seek to claim. The forecast is more or less the same. That is the shape of the policy that we set out in the Budget. I hope you will forgive me, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I wanted to set that out in full, because business rates are rather complicated.

This Government want to go further to support pubs. Pubs are the cornerstone of so many communities, and they are essential to the social and cultural life of so many places across the country. I have heard clearly from Government Members just how important pubs are. I thank colleagues who have engaged constructively and privately with me on this issue in recent weeks. Whether they represent constituencies in coastal or rural communities, towns or cities, their representations have been invaluable. Their constituents should know that most of the politics that they see in the papers is not what matters; it is the conversations and the advocacy of MPs in the corridors of this place that can make the difference. In particular, my honourable friend the Member for Bournemouth East, Tom Hayes, has been a relentless advocate for businesses in his constituency, as have my honourable friends the Members for Isle of Wight West, Mr Quigley, and for Redditch, Chris Bloore. I thank my honourable friend the Member for Warrington North, Charlotte Nichols, for her engagement on this issue, in her role as chair of the all-party group on pubs.

For too long, under the Conservatives, pubs have not had the support they needed. Opposition Members claim to care about pubs, but where were they when the number of pubs fell by 7,000 between 2010 and 2024? They were in government, and they let the number of pubs in our communities fall by a fifth. The Conservatives also allowed the revaluation to go ahead with a business rates methodology for pubs that no longer has the support of the sector. Before the Budget, every pub sector body was broadly signed up to the methodology used for valuing pubs and lent its support to the principles set out in the Valuation Office Agency’s guide. Since the Budget, the same sector bodies have withdrawn their support. The Government acknowledge their concerns and will therefore carry out a review of the pub valuation methodology. The review will report in time to be implemented at the next revaluation.

While that review is ongoing, and given the challenges that pubs faced over the long term under the previous Government, we are stepping in to provide support for pubs in the next three years. Today, I confirm that, from April, every pub in England will get 15% off its new business rates bill, on top of the support announced in the Budget. Pubs’ bills will then be frozen in real terms for a further two years. That support is worth £1,650 to the average pub next year. It will mean that around three-quarters of pubs will see their bills either fall or stay the same next year. This decision will mean that the amount of business rates paid by the pub sector as a whole will be lower in 2028-29 than it is today.

This is Independent Venue Week, so it is particularly appropriate that our package will apply also to music venues. Many live music venues are valued as pubs, and many pubs are grass-roots live music venues. It would not be right to seek to draw the line in a way that includes some and not others, and I thank MPs who have made constructive representations on this issue in recent weeks. In the meantime, we are pressing ahead with wider regulatory reforms, building on the new licensing policy framework in the Budget, and we are working with the sector to ensure that local authorities are using that to ease licensing decisions on the ground. As part of our ongoing licensing reforms, for home nation games in the later stages of the men’s football World Cup this summer, pubs and other licensed venues will be able to open until 1 am or 2 am, depending on when the game starts. We will legislate to increase the number of temporary events notices for pubs and other hospitality venues, whether to help them screen World Cup games, or for other community and cultural events.

This Government are committed to helping pubs build sustainable business models over the long term. In the spring we will consult on further loosening planning rules to benefit pubs, helping them to add new guest rooms or expand their main room without planning applications. We will also continue to engage with the sector to ensure that other retail leisure and hospitality premises have planning flexibility.

This Government also understand that things are not easy out there. Today’s announcement is about additional support for pubs, but we understand that this is a tough time for other businesses on the high street. We have already taken significant steps to acknowledge that and support businesses, including £4.3 billion of business rates support in the Budget. Over the past decade, consumers have changed their habits and are increasingly working from home and shopping online, and these trends continue to make it harder for high street businesses. I am therefore announcing today that later this year the Government will bring forward a high streets strategy to reinvigorate our communities. We will work with businesses and representative bodies to bring that strategy together. It will be a cross-government strategy, and we will be looking at what more the Government can do to support our high streets.

To conclude, this Government have already started the work of reforming our business rates system, and any potential changes to business rates will be considered at the Budget in the usual way. Labour Members have the right economic plan for Britain and will back our high streets and our pubs every step of the way”.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, here we are again, discussing yet another U-turn when the Government conclude, after public outrage at an announcement that they have made and after some tardy reflection, that perhaps they did not get matters right first time. What is offered here is not merely tardy but inadequate. It fails to grapple with the pressures now bearing down on small businesses across the country, especially from business rates.

It is essential that we look beyond the Treasury’s abstractions and confront the real-world consequences of the changes announced in the Budget, which remain even after this U-turn. Tina McKenzie of the Federation of Small Businesses has warned, following this latest announcement, that it simply proves that

“the Government repeatedly fails to recognise the difficulty that these businesses are in”.

I could not echo that more strongly. Andrew Goodacre, the chief executive of the British Independent Retailers Association, went further, describing the change as a “half-baked U-turn” and warning that independent retail is being “flushed down the U-bend”. He added, tellingly, that he could not recall a worse policy decision, cautioning that this poor decision was based on poor reasoning that will inevitably lead to more shop closures—and so on.

The Minister has said that he wishes to work with businesses but, in the face of this negative and consistent feedback from businesses themselves, especially from SMEs, it seems he has been unsuccessful in that aim. It is abundantly clear that the Statement addresses only a small fraction of the economic damage inflicted on businesses since the Government took office.

The inadequacy is not merely one of scale. The relief announced is, by the Government’s own design, temporary, so it is a sticking plaster applied to a deep and structural wound. One of the most persistent economic misunderstandings that this Government have displayed since assuming office is a failure to grasp what businesses actually need: clarity, consistency and certainty. Businesses do not want U-turns, short-lived reliefs, or promises trailed in briefings only to be withdrawn or reannounced days later, as we all saw before the Budget. This announcement exemplifies that failure in its entirety.

Worse still, everyone in the sector is saying that it is inadequate. If the Minister will not listen to His Majesty’s Opposition, perhaps he might listen to Labour Back- Benchers. Jim McMahon and Stella Creasy made the point that I am making in the other place just this week. When Parliament, publicans, business leaders and his own Back-Benchers are urging a reconsideration, what more is the Minister waiting for?

This is ultimately a question of credibility. Businesses do not measure that by press releases or promises of future strategies; they measure it by whether they can plan, invest and survive. What has been announced does not provide that certainty. It is limited in scope and temporary by design, and arrived only after external pressure became unsustainable. That is not how stable tax policy is made or how confidence is restored.

The truth is that confidence in hospitality and retail is fragile. We heard only this morning from Charlie Nunn, CEO of Lloyds Bank, that the sectors in question were having a challenging time. What assessment has the Treasury made of the number of such businesses that have already cancelled investment, reduced staffing or decided to close since the Budget because the Government have failed to provide clarity about their intentions?

If the Government truly wish to work with businesses, they must move beyond reactive concessions and bring forward a coherent, durable approach that treats the whole high street fairly and gives enterprises the certainty they need in order to grow. Until that happens, I fear this week’s announcement will be seen not as a solution but as an admission of failure.

The modest action on pubs is, of course, welcome, and a promise has been made to look at hotels, but will the Minister agree to look at rates for the wider retail, hospitality and leisure sectors before the next Budget? Thousands of shops, cafés, hotels, nightclubs, cinemas and theatres are still facing huge increases. The combination of higher taxes and rates, extra regulation and energy prices for business—four times those in the United States—is crippling these very sectors, and I hope the Minister will be able to promise some relief.

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords, I start with perhaps a modicum of welcome because the combined impact of the Budget and the business rates revaluation prior to this announcement, frankly, left the pub industry on the verge of a crisis, with up to 50% of pubs under the threat of closure. Some relief has now been offered for many pubs, and I am glad that this lifeline has been extended to live music venues, which are the birthing ground of our very important music industry.

Do the Government recognise that the relief that they have just announced amounts roughly to only £1,650 per pub, which will still leave many in a critical financial hole? Do they recognise that pubs with a rateable value of over £100,000 are, in effect, not eligible, and that restaurants, cafés and soft-play areas—so many of those hospitality and leisure operations that lie at the heart of our high streets and communities—will get no relief from these changes whatsoever?

The chaos that has surrounded the announcement of the review—the change and uncertainty that has gone with it and the impact on the sector—surely points to the fact that we need to stop trying to fix the business rates system at the fringes. We need to take a proper step back and review the whole way in which business rates are structured, which, I would say, should head in the direction of land value. There is so much to be done around this area. It is time that the Government see that, rather than get into continuous messes by attempting to ameliorate a system that, frankly, is broken.

Do the Government also accept that the chaotic process that we have seen deeply underscores the need to include hospitality in the industrial strategy? At the very least, one would hope that the effect of that would be to force the Treasury to align tax policy with the economic goal of strengthening our high streets and our hospitality and leisure sectors, and to determine that they are a source of growth, not of constant crisis and constraint. Does the Minister accept that, until the Treasury gets aligned with that agenda, we will have constant issues like that? Frankly, that is not the best way to go.

[The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Livermore) (Lab)]

I am very grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Neville-Rolfe and Lady Kramer, for their comments and questions, and for their cautious welcome of what we have announced.

The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, ignored what we announced in the Budget: the £4.3 billion of support for those experiencing increases in business rates. As she knows, the previous valuation was based on property values during the Covid pandemic, which meant that rateable values were much lower. As a result of that valuation, some businesses, including the retail, hospitality and leisure venues that we are discussing, are now seeing an increase.

At the Budget, we announced three elements of support at a cost £4.3 billion, which neither noble Baroness mentioned in their comments. We are implementing transitional relief that will cap increases at 5% for the smallest properties and at up to 30% for the largest. For any business whose value increase has meant that they are no longer eligible for small business rates relief, we are capping their increase. We have expanded the supporting small business relief scheme, to provide specific support to those who are currently eligible for the 40% RHL relief.

The noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, said that the wider system needs reform; we absolutely agree on that and have begun that. We are reforming the business rates system by introducing permanently lower tax rates for over 750,000 retail, hospitality and leisure properties. The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, said that what we are doing is temporary, but those new lower rates are permanent—unlike what the previous Government did—and they will be funded by higher rates on the most valuable properties, including those of online giants.

I remind the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, that the previous Government’s plans were to scrap entirely the temporary Covid-era retail, hospitality and leisure relief in 2025—but she now says that more support should be offered. If they had won the last election, their plans clearly show that they would have removed it overnight in April last year. They now claim that they would extend it, so why did they not say so or include that in their forecasts or projections?

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, for what she described as her cautious welcome of what has been announced. We have of course been listening to the industry. We have announced that, from April, every pub in England will get 15% off its new business rates bill, on top of the support announced at the Budget. Their bills will then be frozen in real terms for a further two years. The noble Baroness noted that the support will be worth £1,650 for the average pub next year, but that means that three-quarters of pubs will see their bills either fall or stay flat next year. This decision will also mean that the amount of business rates paid by the pub sector as a whole will be 8% lower in 2028-29 than it is today.

The noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, said that pubs with ratable values of over £100,000 would not benefit, but we are clear that this will apply to all pubs. I am grateful for what she said about this applying to music venues too. Many live music venues are valued as pubs, and many pubs are grass-roots live music venues, so it would not be right to seek to draw the line so tightly as to include some but not others.

The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, also talked about the structural issues that many of these businesses are facing, and she will know that the sector has raised concerns about the way that they are valued. The Government agree that this needs to be looked at. We are therefore launching a review that will examine how pubs are valued for business rates, and we will set out more detail on that in due course.

The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, spent a lot of her statement telling us about what businesses need. What they need most is stability; they did not need the previous Government, with the Liz Truss mini-Budget, Brexit and austerity, and all the consequences that they had. The noble Baroness commented on what we are doing for business. She will know that, under the previous Government, business investment was the lowest in the entire G7, and that, since the election, business investment has increased faster in this country than in any other G7 country. I am more than happy to compare her record with ours.

The noble Baroness will know that we are pressing ahead with wider regulatory reforms to help businesses, as well as carrying out licensing reform, and that we are looking at loosening planning rules to benefit pubs more generally. She will also know that we are doubling the hospitality support fund with £10 million of funding over three years.

The noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, talked about the importance of the sector for growth, and the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, talked about the challenges faced by the wider sector. I understand the challenges that many other retail, hospitality and leisure companies are facing. We have already taken significant steps to support businesses, including, as I said, the £4.3 billion of business rates support.

As we all know, consumers have changed their habits over the past decade and are increasingly working from home and shopping online. Combined with the pandemic and the increase in energy costs since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, these trends have continued to make it harder for high street businesses. Therefore, later this year the Government will bring forward a high street strategy, and we will work with businesses and representative bodies to look at what more the Government can do to support our high streets.

12:17

[Lord Watts (Lab)]

My Lords, is it not the case that the previous Government wrecked the economy and gave us Brexit, which reduced our ability to pay for public services? The Opposition now seem to be calling for greater public expenditure and tax cuts. It sounds as though they have found not just one money tree but an orchard. Can the Minister explain how someone can call for more expenditure and less tax?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I very much agree with everything that my noble friend said. Among the long litany of the previous Government’s failures, their failure on growth was one of their most significant. We saw Brexit and the Liz Truss mini-Budget, and we know what business thought of that. We saw business investment across the whole economy fall to the lowest level in the entire G7. My noble friend is also absolutely correct to point out that, every time we debate the economy in the Chamber, the noble Baroness opposite supports every single piece of spending that we announce but opposes every single piece of revenue raising. It is quite clear that those two things do not add up.

On the Tory record more widely, we should note that 7,000 pubs have closed in the past 14 years, and that the previous Government’s plans were to scrap entirely the temporary Covid retail, hospitality and leisure relief in 2025. Their plans show that they would have ended it overnight. We have chosen a different path by extending that support with the help of £4.3 billion of additional support.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, it would be churlish not to welcome the measures—so far as they go—that the Chancellor has introduced. However, does the Minister accept that it is small family businesses—the hair salons, cafés and restaurants, among others, to which my noble friend on the Front Bench referred—that will be directly affected by the lack of support? Does he accept that, if these small family businesses do not get support, it will damage their programme for growth and lead to a lack of growth and a loss of jobs?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I respectfully say to the noble Baroness that she must take what has been announced this week in the round with what was announced in the Budget. We spent £4.3 billion supporting exactly the type of businesses the noble Baroness mentions. We have expanded the supporting small business scheme to provide specific support to those who are currently eligible for the 40% RHL relief. Around one in three businesses continues to benefit from small business rates relief and does not pay anything at all. We have extended the second property grace period to support small businesses as they grow. So, I do not accept that we are not supporting those businesses. But equally, I absolutely understand the challenges that many retail, hospitality and leisure businesses are facing, which is exactly why, later this year, the Government will bring forward a high street strategy and work with businesses and representative bodies, looking at what more the Government can do to support our high streets.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, I am sure the Minister will agree that one of the things that will drive growth is consumer confidence. It is very hard for consumers to be confident when they see their high streets putting up shutters and “closed” signs. The Minister also talked about changed behaviour and the driving of online sales. Beneath that is a real inequity, in that the out-of-town warehouses which have been driving those digital sales have a rates square foot rate about a tenth, if not less, of that of the high street stores with which they compete. When the Minister is having this review, can he review not only the high streets but how the out-of-town warehouses are eroding those high streets?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I agree with the noble Lord on the importance of consumer confidence—and six interest rate cuts since the election is very important to bolstering that consumer confidence. It is the fastest pace of interest rate cuts for 17 years, and the action we took in the Budget to further cut inflation and bear down on borrowing will support the Bank of England in the work it is doing to reduce interest rates. I also agree with what the noble Lord says about out-of-town online giants, and that is why we are reforming the business rates system. As I said, we are introducing permanently lower tax rates for over 750,000 retail, hospitality and leisure properties, and we are funding that with higher rates on the most valuable properties, including the warehouses used by online giants. But I absolutely understand what the noble Lord is saying, and I am more than happy to look at that as part of the work to develop the high street strategy.

[Lord Bridges of Headley (Con)]

My Lords, can the noble Lord shed some light on when the review of hotels is likely to report and conclude, and when hoteliers might be able to see some relief on their business rates?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

Hotels will continue to benefit from the support for business rates announced at the Budget. As I have already said, this latest package needs to be seen in the round with the £4.3 billion that we announced at the time of the Budget, including the transitional relief scheme, which will cap increases for those seeing the largest increases. The noble Lord is right, though, to mention hotels, and we recognise that hotels have expressed concerns about how they are valued for business rates. Hotel valuations are undertaken in a different way from some other sectors, so we will review the way hotels are valued as part of our wider valuation review. The methodology used is well established, but as with pubs, specific concerns have been raised with us, and it is right to review this to ensure it accurately reflects the rental value for these sectors. Any potential changes to business rates as a result of that review will be considered at the Budget in the usual way.

[Lord Gove (Con)]

Of all the U-turns that have been executed since the Minister joined the Treasury team, whether on the family farm tax, business rates or the winter fuel payment, which is his favourite?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I am very happy to tell the noble Lord what my least favourite policy of the previous Government was, and that was Brexit.

[Lord Forbes of Newcastle (Lab)]

My Lords, does my noble friend the Minister agree with me about the importance of certainty and security for businesses in the payment of business rates in particular? While local authority funding is predicated on the retention of business rates at a local level, as well as council tax rates, there is regional variation in the deployment of the collection of those rates, based on differential bandings according to the nature of properties in those areas. Will he consider the challenge that many small businesses face in having to pay business rates, compared to the longevity of property owners? Will he consider looking at the payment of business rates in future by business owners rather than businesses themselves as a way of smoothing out some of these challenges?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for that question, which obviously comes from a position of deep expertise in this matter. I am more than happy to look at all the issues he raises and take them back to my Treasury colleagues to discuss them further.

[Baroness Foster of Oxton (Con)]

My Lords, 3.5 million jobs are dependent on a successful hospitality industry in this country—that is obviously the entire supply chain. I spent a lot of my life in the airline industry, which is at one end of that. Notwithstanding that, when we look at tourism, which encompasses hotels, taxis, restaurants and cafes, this Government have a complete lack of understanding of the impact of what they are doing. They are under pressure because they will not take steps to address the welfare bill, so they are taking moneys and taxes from areas that often cannot afford it. We know that will cause long-term damage, despite this sop of the slight reduction for pubs in the next couple of years.

As we look at the welfare bill, will the Government please reconsider what they are doing, and instead of making another U-turn—well, we would like a really big U-turn on this one: we would like it to be abolished—take a real look at what else they can do to raise revenue where we know expenditure is wholly excessive and cannot be carried on?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I agree with the first thing the noble Baroness said, on the importance of the sector and jobs; I did not agree with anything else she said. She said that we have a lack of understanding: I just wonder what she would have done. We spent £4.3 billion in the Budget supporting these businesses: she did not acknowledge that. She did not acknowledge that the previous Government, whom she presumably supported, would have ended Covid relief overnight and had absolutely no plans to extend it, as we have. She said she would abolish business rates. Well, she had 14usb years to do that, and she did not. I wonder how she would now fund the abolition of business rates, and what other services she would cut to do that.

The noble Baroness mentioned airlines. The Government have redesigned the 2023 transitional relief scheme to provide generous support for large properties such as airports and those in other industrial strategy sectors. That is extremely important. She mentioned hotels, and I have answered that question already. As I say, I fundamentally disagree with her. The Government she supported would have ended this relief overnight; we have extended it.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, following the moderately good reception to my last question, I am going to push my luck. Following on from the from the noble Lord, Lord Forbes, when this review is under way, can the Treasury review a commercial landowner levy rather than a straight business rate? That does not penalise investment, and it puts the onus on the people who actually own the land. If the Minister is not 100% au fait with the Liberal Democrat policy on this, I would be very happy to arrange a briefing for him and colleagues.

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I may not have read all the Liberal Democrat policy documents as thoroughly as perhaps I should have. I cannot commit the review to considering specific things right now, but I am more than happy to take those thoughts back to the Treasury.

[Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)]

Although my experience of government is now over 30 years old, the one message I remember from being in Cabinet is that on matters of taxation and investment, the Government have to get it right first time. That is the only way to establish a pro-growth, pro-business strategy. So, what I would love to hear from the Minister, having heard the messages from all sides of the House, is that the relief announced—one of what his noble friend the Minister admitted is 14 U-turns—is probably a little late and not enough. Therefore, the future must rely on a better strategy. Is the Minister confident that the consultation the Government are having right across the business sector is sufficient to ensure that they get that pro-business, pro-growth strategy right?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I say, with the greatest respect to the noble Lord, that I am being lectured by Conservatives on stability and investment when we had 14 years of instability and chronic underinvestment. We saw underinvestment in the public sector and the lowest rates of private sector investment in the entire G7 so, as I said, with the greatest respect, I may not take all those lectures. Obviously, investment is vital to our economy. Stability is vital to that, as are the reforms that we are taking, not least in terms of planning, for example, to get more investment into our economy.

The noble Lord says that the measures we have taken are a little late. Of course, we spent £4.3 billion in the Budget, and it was vital that we did that. He says that they are not enough. As I said, the previous Government, if they had won the election, would have done absolutely nothing. It is important to contrast that, but I agree with what he said about consulting and working hand in hand in partnership with business, so that we absolutely understand and get the most pro-growth, pro-business policies that we possibly can.

[Lord Watts (Lab)]

My Lords, has the Minister noticed that the Opposition say that the private sector does not like U-turns, they say they do not like U-turns, and then they call for more U-turns? What is their strategy for dealing with our current problems?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I cannot answer for the strategy of the party opposite—I am sure we would all like to know—but what matters most is that we get to the right policy and I believe that we have done so in this case.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, the Official Opposition have actually come forward with plans for the high street, which we would be very glad to share with the Minister as he does his high street review. I think we should have not only Lib Dem ideas but Conservative ideas. We have a new Opposition now. We are looking forward, not backwards. We are very keen to see the country grow and the high streets flourish.

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I am sure the noble Baroness would like to look forwards and not backwards, but I am not sure the country shares that view. The country remembers the past 14 years and the damage that party opposite did to the economy, the public services and the fabric of our nation. As I said already, the noble Baroness cannot wriggle out of the fact that, had her party won the election, it would have ended this relief overnight entirely in 2025. It was in her plans—the plans that we inherited from her. If she now claims that she would have extended the relief, why did her party not say so and include it in their forecasts or projections? We have to take what her party says now with a huge pinch of salt. As I have said, the party opposite always supports the spending that we are doing but does not support a single one of the measures we are taking to raise the revenue for that spending. I suspect that its plans are equally uncosted.