Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Hammond of Runnymede and Seema Malhotra

Tuesday 28th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

6. What fiscal plans he has to support small businesses.

[The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr Philip Hammond)]

The Government continue to support small businesses to access the finance they need to grow through the British Business Bank, which supports almost £3.4 billion of finance to 54,000 smaller business. In the autumn statement, I announced an additional £400 million of funding for the bank. We also reaffirmed our commitment to the business tax road map, including the permanent doubling of the small business rates relief and the extension of the thresholds for the relief, so that 600,000 small businesses—occupiers of one third of all business properties—will pay no rates at all.

[Seema Malhotra]

Federation of Small Businesses research says that over a third of small businesses expect their business rates to increase from 1 April. Small shops will be hit hard, while large supermarkets are set to gain. In Hounslow, the estimated 12% increase has led worried businesses to tell me that they expect to see jobs and investment cuts. The Chancellor would not want his fiscal decisions adversely to impact on growth and prosperity, so will he now commit to righting this wrong in his Budget? Will he also support Labour’s five-point plan to help small businesses through the revaluation?

[Mr Hammond]

I think the last thing small businesses need is any help from the Labour party. From what I have seen of Labour’s plans, that would be the final straw for most of them.

As we have said, we recognise that some small businesses are facing very substantial percentage increases, even where the actual amounts might not be very large, and that that can be difficult for businesses to absorb. We have committed to coming forward with a proposal that will address those who are hardest hit by that phenomenon.

Autumn Statement

Debate between Lord Hammond of Runnymede and Seema Malhotra

Wednesday 23rd November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

No; I am sorry to say that to my hon. Friend. What I have done today is added £23 billion-worth of infrastructure and R and D expenditure to existing very significant budgets. Part of that will go to transport and some of that will go to road schemes, but it will be for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport to listen to the representations that my hon. Friend and others are making and to allocate the fund, according to the appropriate principles, to maximise productivity growth in our economy. I am sure that he will be delighted to talk to her.

[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

Schools in my constituency are not alone in stepping in to fill the welfare gap, as parents on the breadline hit by Government cuts struggle to buy their children’s school uniforms, shoes and stationery. The situation is getting worse—in the 21st century. What impact does the Chancellor believe his projected 8% per-pupil spending cuts, as estimated by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, will have on the social mobility of a generation of children? How can it be right that instead of softening the cuts, for which he voted, he has instead chosen to spend £60 million a year on expanding grammar schools? What I have raised should have been part of his plan for productivity.

[Mr Hammond]

I do not agree with the hon. Lady; she needs to look at these things in the round. I know that Labour Members like to take a single example and exaggerate it, but they need to look at the package in the round: what we are doing with raising personal allowances for taxation for people in work, dramatically reducing the tax that they pay; taking millions of people out of taxation; and a pay rise for millions of people from the national living wage. The hon. Lady should look at it in the round.