Supporting Small Business

Debate between Alyn Smith and Huw Merriman

Tuesday 19th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Huw Merriman]

I do agree. Interestingly, the CBI has talked about the challenge on business rates because every three or five years there is a revaluation and business does not have the certainty it needs. I think in Hackney there was a change of about 46%. The CBI recognised that the uncertainty of this type of big-shock fiscal events can absolutely impact business’s ability to plan and invest in the future. A referendum on the whole future as to whether Scotland will be part of the UK, its biggest trading partner, must surely have some impact.

[Alyn Smith (Stirling) (SNP)]

On the hon. Gentleman’s point about Princes Street, did he manage to make it along to the new, shiny, marvellous St James Quarter, where a number of the businesses he talked about relocated to? He is making a point in isolation about one street in the country, not the entire nation, and it is possibly unwise to draw too many conclusions from one street.

[Huw Merriman]

The hon. Member makes a fair point, because two out of four businesses have relocated to St James Quarter, with the interestingly shaped top that is called things that I would not repeat in this Chamber, but Jenners, a classic department store that is not relocating, is a good example of a casualty of changing trends.

It would be absolutely churlish not to recognise what this Government have done over the past 18 months. I represent a constituency in Sussex that is absolutely reliant in employment terms on small businesses in leisure, tourism and retail. The constituency I represent has businesses that were among the 750,000 that were given a business rate holiday. Furlough is not just keeping the employees going but making sure that they are returning back to the businesses. Some 15,300 workers in my constituency, about a third, were reliant on furlough to keep them going. When I went round to visit those businesses last summer—it had been very difficult for us to meet, but the changes in the summer allowed us to do that—they were absolutely of the view that had it not been for the Government’s support, their businesses would have shut down and their employees would have been made redundant. Everything that I am about to say has to be put in the context of the fact that this Government have absolutely supported business. I absolutely refute the point that the Conservative party is no longer the party of business; it absolutely is and it will always have the champions of business on these Benches.

In the six years since I have been a Member of this place, I have always championed the need to reform business rates. If we look across the G7, we see that the UK has the largest property taxes. They are a tax on jobs and a tax on business, and I would like to see them reformed. Over those years, we have had a number of reviews, and we are waiting on one at the moment. I would dearly like to see business rates replaced. The CBI is right when it says that business rates are a tax on business and jobs and lead to uncertainty. I see the shadow Chancellor, the hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) nodding her head.

What is also important is that I stand for fiscal responsibility. Something has to come in place of business rates that brings in the exact same yield. With respect to the shadow Chancellor, when she was pushed by my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) on how the £20 billion-plus that business rates bring in as revenue would be replaced, she was only able to give a figure of about £7 billion. That leads to a big deficit. That means there would either have to be public spending cuts to make up for the shortfall, or we would have to go into further debt, which is no good for business or the individual.