Business Rates

Debate between Mel Stride and Geoffrey Clifton-Brown

Tuesday 2nd April 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mel Stride)]

We have had a very good debate on the extremely important matter of business rates. I will reiterate right at the start that this Government want to see taxes as low as possible. We have made a number of advances in that respect, as the House will know, in areas such as income tax and corporation tax. Equally, we want the burden of rates on businesses up and down the country to be as low as possible. For that reason, as several right hon. and hon. Members have highlighted, we doubled the small business rates relief, from £6,000 to £12,000 as a rateable value threshold, taking 655,000 businesses out of business rates altogether.

We also switched from the retail prices index to the consumer prices index for the uprating of the multiplier, further reducing the burden by £5 billion over the next five years. In 2016 we introduced £300 million for hard cases, which is there for local authorities to use at their discretion. We doubled the level of rural rate relief, from 50% to 100%, to help small communities where perhaps there is just one pub, post office or petrol station. A number of right hon. and hon. Members mentioned the discount of one third brought in at the last Budget.

I congratulate my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) on securing the debate. He asked a number of sensible and relevant questions about the whole way we structure our business rates. He asked specifically about the allowance, which we have discussed previously. We are looking at that seriously, but it depends to a large degree on our getting in place the digital arrangements between local authorities so that we can transfer information on business premises owned by the same entity. That programme will be introduced by about 2024, but I am happy to have further discussions with him on the matter.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I truncated the last bit of my speech, but I was going to say that the existing IT platform is regarded by the professionals who have to work with it as being clunky and difficult to work. Does the re-design by 2024 that my right hon. Friend mentioned include an entirely new programme?

[Mel Stride]

I will have to come back to my hon. Friend with an answer to that specific technical question, but I will gladly do so.

Several Members rightly mentioned our high streets package. My right hon. Friend for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) made reference to the fact that it is not all about business rates; it is also about how we design and evolve our high streets to face the changing nature of retailing, which of course includes the rapid advance of online retailing.

Several Members mentioned the digital service tax that we are committed to bringing in by 2020, and we will do so unilaterally in the absence of a multilateral move on the behalf of other countries.

Business Rates: Small Retail Businesses

Debate between Mel Stride and Geoffrey Clifton-Brown

Tuesday 9th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

The hon. Lady will probably be aware of the Chancellor’s speech at our recent party conference, in which he spoke quite strongly about the importance of a level playing field for online businesses that derive value in the United Kingdom and end up paying very little tax and about the international tax approach that we may look at taking unilaterally as a consequence. The most important thing overall is that the Government recognise that when it comes to high streets and the smaller retailers to which the hon. Lady refers, we should take measures to reduce the burden of rates, particularly among smaller businesses, in the way that I have described this evening. That makes bills fairer for everyone, as they more closely reflect the current rental values and relative changes in rents. To ensure that ratepayers benefit from this change at the earliest point, the spring statement 2018 included an announcement that the next revaluation would be brought forward by one year to 2021.

Before I address some of the specific points raised by my hon. Friend, it is worth highlighting that, at autumn budget 2017, we brought forward the planned switch in the indexation of business rates from RPI to CPI by two years. This switch is worth £2.3 billion over five years, and the move to CPI is worth £4.1 billion in total by 2023. So once more, the Government are making a significant investment to recognise the pressures that rates introduce.

My hon. Friend raised the specific issue—

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

Before my right hon. Friend goes on to the specific BIRA proposals, may I put to him something about the out-of-town retailers, particularly supermarkets? As I explained to the House, the rateable system is based on rents payable, which one would assume in a market would sort itself out. The problem with out-of-town supermarkets is that they have a monopoly on these sites and they manage artificially to keep the rents low, so their rates are unfair compared with the in-town shops, as I have already demonstrated with my Stow-on-the-Wold example. Something needs to be looked at. I do not know whether the issue could be looked at in a revaluation system or whether legislation is needed, but it is an issue particularly when the out-of-town supermarkets are competing with the small in-town businesses. For example, the owner of a card shop recently told me that the out-of-town supermarket started selling cards and immediately put him out of business.

[Mel Stride]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I know that the Valuation Office Agency is thorough in the way in which it conducts revaluations. It is an independent agency. However, I note the point that he has made, and if he would like to write to me or meet me to discuss it in the context of potential undervaluations, I am open to doing so.

The points that my hon. Friend made included the idea of an allowance instead of the threshold. I assume that he wanted to apply that allowance to all retail businesses, and of course that would come with some cost. It would mean providing further additional relief to some companies or businesses that do not currently receive it.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I hope that I chose my wording very carefully. I said that the allowance would be applied only to businesses that qualified for small business relief. It would be nonsense automatically to give the big businesses an allowance. That would cost the Treasury, and I want to make it clear that my proposals are revenue neutral.

[Mel Stride]

I thank my hon. Friend for clarifying that point, and I am sorry that I misunderstood. He asked what the costs of compliance were under the current system and suggested that, if we changed it, we might be able to absolve ourselves from those costs and pass the benefits on to these businesses. That is certainly something that I am happy to look at and discuss with him. The overarching point is that we had a fundamental review of business rates in 2015, and many of the issues that my hon. Friend has raised were carefully looked at.

My hon. Friend said that he recognised that change would take some time, and we are likely to be considering these matters over some reasonable period. He raised the issue of the confidence of small business retailers at the moment, and this is where I would broaden the debate’s scope a little by saying that it is not just bearing down on business rates that is the mission of this Government. We also provide the employment allowance and we are bringing down small business tax rates, with corporation tax having fallen from 28% in 2010 to 19% now and set to reduce further to 17% in time. A lot of small businesses, including retailers, will be benefiting from other measures such as fuel duty freezes. We have just announced that fuel duty will be frozen for yet another year—the ninth year in succession.

In conclusion, let me again thank my hon. Friend for this very important debate. He is focusing on one of the great challenges of our time for our high streets, which lie at the heart of our local communities. It behoves us all to do all we can to make sure they are live, whole and thriving.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I want to impress on the Minister that this problem is not going to go away. The decline of our high streets is getting worse. It is accelerating, so the Government cannot just sit back. With great respect, just providing allowances in the rating system to try to make this work means that the tax base is being eroded, because the allowances have to be provided. The Government need to look at this seriously to see how they can make the system work a little better, particularly in favour of small businesses.

[Mel Stride]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right; high streets face a variety of challenges, of which business rates is but one. One of the greatest challenges they face is the change in how we are now shopping, with just over 18% of all retail now going online; that presents a huge challenge and that number is likely to increase in time. That tells us that high streets will need to transition, reinvent themselves, change and come up with new ways to serve their local communities and drive traffic into our high streets. We recognise the importance of making sure that all those things are looked at through the planning system and the reviews we are carrying out at the moment and through the important work we have been carrying out to date. I see this debate as being very important in that regard. We will continue to keep this under review in terms of making sure we keep those cost pressures through the business rates system as low as they can be for our important high street retailers.

Question put and agreed to.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mel Stride and Geoffrey Clifton-Brown

Tuesday 24th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

As the hon. and learned Lady will know, when the Scottish Government decided to restructure their police and fire services, they went into that decision with their eyes wide open—they knew what the VAT consequences would be—so it is down to the SNP to ask those questions of itself.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

T6. When is the Treasury likely to give the sign-off to phase 2b of HS2, which you will know, Mr Speaker, runs through Cheshire?