Small Business Saturday

Debate between Alok Sharma and Stephen Mosley

Thursday 4th December 2014 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Mosley (City of Chester) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Hollobone, for the opportunity to highlight the crucial importance of having thriving, popular and successful small businesses in our towns and cities, and to emphasise the important role that small business Saturday plays in helping small businesses to achieve their potential. Small businesses are the lifeblood of our economy. They account for 99% of all businesses in the UK. They employ some 15 million people across the country and they account for half our private sector GDP. Small businesses play such an important role in our national economy that if every small business took on one new member of staff, we would eliminate unemployment overnight.

[Alok Sharma (Reading West) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this incredibly important debate. He is making the case for small businesses up and down the country, which will have welcomed some of the statements from the Chancellor yesterday. Does my hon. Friend share my view that one of the great bugbears for many small businesses has been the business rate structure? The small businesses that I have talked to in the past 24 hours really welcomed the Chancellor’s proposed review of business rates.

[Stephen Mosley]

All of us, as Members of Parliament, receive complaints about business rates from our constituents and those who run businesses. The cost of business rates comes straight off the bottom line of a business—straight out of profit and straight out of the money that people take home at the end of the day—and it has a huge impact on businesses. That is especially true in a constituency such as mine, where we have a thriving and popular city centre with very high rental values. The rateable values for small shops in the city centre are quite extortionate. I welcome the announcements about the reform of business rates, the extension of small business rate relief and the increase of the rebate for small businesses from £1,000 to £1,500 in April.

As our economy grows and evolves, so do our small businesses. Whereas small business used to mean the corner shop on the high street, it can now mean artisan producers on stalls at farmers markets, family-run restaurants and bars, an international e-business run by a student from his bedroom or a boutique clothes business run from the kitchen table by a full-time mum. The fact that small business in the UK is booming is great news for Britain, great news for jobs and great news for wealth creation. Across the country, record numbers of people are starting their own small businesses, and British entrepreneurs created a record number of new businesses last year. Research from the national enterprise campaign shows that more than 526,000 businesses were created in 2013, which was up from 484,000 in 2012 and 440,000 in 2011. We all want that trend to continue.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Mosley]

I totally agree. Shopping habits are changing. People are moving online, and they are increasingly using out-of-town shopping centres. We as community leaders, local authorities and other organisations must get behind our high streets to ensure that when people go shopping in their local high street, they are not simply going to the shops but are having an experience in which they learn something and enjoy themselves. It is incumbent on all of us—Governments and local authorities, but also businesses and local communities—to make sure that high streets are vibrant, fun and exciting so that people decide to go to them. Only if people go to shopping centres and provide the necessary footfall will businesses move in and take up the empty shops.

[Alok Sharma]

My hon. Friend talked about support, and of course we can all offer support, but there is Government support as well. I believe that the Government have been relentless in their support for business, and we all welcome that. The Government have all sorts of schemes to help small businesses. What more does my hon. Friend think that we in the House, or the Government, can do to inform people of those schemes and of the support that is available to help them to prosper and grow?

[Stephen Mosley]

My hon. Friend has got to the nub of the debate. As well as highlighting small business Saturday, the debate is about highlighting the support that is available for small businesses across the country. I will talk later in my speech about what the Government are doing. I am sure that the Minister is quite capable of banging the drum and telling us all about the good work that he and the Government have done to support small businesses.