Oral Answers to Questions

Alun Cairns Excerpts

Tuesday 28th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

The right hon. Gentleman seems to have forgotten that if the last Labour Government had continued in office prices would have been even higher, because it is this Government who reduced fuel duty.

[Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)]

3. What recent fiscal steps he has taken to support small businesses.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

4. What recent fiscal steps he has taken to help high street businesses.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr George Osborne)]

We heard today that our economy continues to grow and we know that there is currently the greatest number of businesses in the UK on record—around 400,000 more than at the general election. We have supported that by reversing the previous Government’s increase in the small companies tax, undoing their jobs tax, cutting red tape, freezing fuel duty, taking the smallest firms out of business rates and helping the high street, and in a few months’ time, we will have our employment allowance, a £2,000 cashback on jobs, which will take almost half a million small firms out of employer national insurance altogether. Unlike others, we are unabashedly pro-business.

[Alun Cairns]

Small businesses recognise the supportive economic framework that the Chancellor has set out, such as reductions in corporation tax, national insurance and business rates, among many others, by recruiting more people than ever before. Will the Chancellor reassure me that he will not follow any advice from the shadow Chancellor, who called for a plan B and predicted a double and even a triple-dip recession?

[Mr Osborne]

There is no danger of that. In the last few days, even the Labour Ministers who served with the shadow Chancellor are not prepared to follow his advice. The important point here is that we have supported a private sector recovery, small businesses are absolutely at the centre of that, and the Prime Minister yesterday, at the Federation of Small Businesses, reinforced the point that we are there to do more to help small businesses and we encourage them to come forward with ideas for the Budget.