Budget Resolutions

Andrew Griffith Excerpts

Thursday 12th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Alok Sharma]

I will talk about the discussions I have had with business groups and business representatives, including those from the aviation sector. The Chancellor was very clear yesterday that this is a start. We will keep the situation under constant review and where support is required, we will look to see what we are able to provide.

Returning to the business interruption loan scheme, this is a temporary scheme that will help small businesses to access much needed finance. Yesterday, the Chancellor also announced £2.2 billion of support for about 700,000 businesses which are in receipt of small business rate relief or rural business rate relief. We want to ensure that every single eligible business gets their £3,000 at the earliest opportunity. We will work with local authorities to make sure that that happens. We will also refund businesses with fewer than 250 employees which pay qualifying statutory sick pay to people who are absent from work due to self-isolating for up to two weeks. We are providing vital tax relief, temporarily abolishing business rates for retailers whose premises have a rateable value of less than £51,000 and expanding the discount to include leisure and hospitality businesses. From creating jobs to supporting communities, small businesses are absolutely the backbone of our economy and this Government will always stand by them.

Yesterday, my Ministry colleagues and I heard from the Bank of England’s chief economist, who stressed the vital action that the Bank is taking to help banks to provide additional credit to businesses. Banks must absolutely be part of the solution and we are already seeing signs of that. Earlier this week, NatWest and Lloyds launched funds of £5 billion and £2 billion respectively for small and medium-sized enterprises directly affected by the impact of covid-19. NatWest also pledged to defer customers’ mortgage and loan repayments for three months. I want to see more lenders stepping forward and supporting our businesses through these challenging times.

As Business Secretary, I regularly speak to the business community, and in the light of covid-19, I have ramped up that engagement. Last night, I spoke with business groups and trade associations, including those from the aviation sector, to discuss the measures in the Budget and to reassure them of the Government’s commitment to support them. As I said, we will keep our response under review as the situation develops, but let me be very clear: this Government will always be on the side of business, entrepreneurs and innovators, because they pay the taxes that fund our brilliant public services.

Although I started my remarks by discussing our short-term measures to fight covid-19, it is worth reflecting what Conservatives in Government have achieved with the economy since 2010—I know that the shadow Chancellor will want to hear this. Employment is at a record high. The unemployment rate is at its lowest since the 1970s. A record number of women and a record number of people from ethnic minority backgrounds are in work. Over 1 million more people with health conditions and disabilities are in work now than five years ago, and youth unemployment has almost halved since 2010. Employment is higher in every nation and region of the United Kingdom than in 2010.

[Andrew Griffith (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the acid test of how productive an economy is and how well it is doing is its ability to attract investment from global investors who could deploy capital anywhere in the world? In that context, does he agree that it is a sign of success that the United Kingdom attracts more direct investment than France and Germany combined?

[Alok Sharma]

My hon. Friend makes an incredibly important point. He has had a very successful business career and knows all about attracting inward investment, and he is absolutely right: the UK has been, and will continue to be, a beacon under this Government for foreign inward investment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Griffith (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

May I congratulate all my hon. Friends who have made such excellent maiden speeches in this debate? I also wish to draw Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, which relates to my former employment, before I joined this House.

This is an excellent Budget both for business and for my constituents in Arundel and South Downs. I commend my right hon. Friend the Chancellor’s delivery yesterday, but, more importantly, this is a Budget that will stand the test of time. Before the immediate events of the last week or so, this was an economy whose businesses had wind in their sails, straining at their moorings with a new captain at the helm—a Secretary of State who has personal roots that stretch beyond these shores, into the sort of overseas markets that represent an outsized opportunity to create growth and employment for generations to come. This is important; the only way we can truly level up the whole United Kingdom is with an enterprise and export-led renaissance. It is only business that creates the real jobs, opportunities and wealth that will make our school and university leavers of the future look askance at the idea of ever leaving our great northern cities to move south.

Our natural advantages as a location to start, grow and run a business are immense: a world-class legal system with a strong respect for the rule of law; our position between the Asian and American time zones; a flexible and educated workforce; and, of course, English as our own, but increasingly the world’s, language. This Budget sits alongside a world replete with opportunities.

In that context, I warmly welcome the proposal to increase the business rates discount to 100%, and to expand it to the leisure and hospitality sectors. But may I encourage the Chancellor to go just a little bit further? My constituent, Positive Images Design, is a world-leading supplier to the exhibition sector—which, as we might expect in the wake of the cancellation of events across the globe, is among the very hardest hit. As things stand, this sector and this thriving business in West Chiltington in my constituency would not benefit from the same relief, which I cannot believe was the intention. If it would help, I would be pleased to meet the relevant Minister and give him more details of the case.

I welcome the growing wide recognition that the current structure of business rates is a burden, particularly for small enterprises. These rates tax businesses before they have had the chance to make the first £1 of revenue, and unduly penalise those who remain anchored in their local communities, such as the high streets in the small towns of Arundel, Hurstpierpoint, Storrington and Petworth in my constituency. The measures announced in the Budget go a very long way to relieving the burden for the smallest businesses. I welcome the Chancellor’s commitment to a fundamental review and encourage the Business Secretary to be a strong and passionate voice for business in that review—as, indeed, shall I.

While we are on the subject of tax, I am on the record as having said that with the UK being such an attractive place to do business, we should be competitive but have the self-confidence not to compete on having the lowest rate of tax. I fully support the Chancellor’s proposal to maintain the rate of corporation tax at its current level of 19% rather than reduce it further. Indeed, I would go further on a future occasion and support an increase back to £1 in every £5 of profit as part of a fiscally neutral rebalancing of the business rates burden.

Business needs people and people need homes, so I particularly welcome the Chancellor’s announcement of a £400 million brownfield housing fund, and the renewed focus on creating more homes from the millions of acres of real brownfield land across the UK. This has to be the right way to proceed. We need the right homes in the right places, and for those homes to be sustainable. Absolutely the wrong way to proceed would be some of the unsustainable, large-scale housing development that is currently being advocated for my constituency and is blighting the lives and peace of mind of my constituents. Proposals such as those made by Mayfield Market Towns or at Buck Barn despoil some of our last remaining precious countryside, put native species at risk of extinction, and are fundamentally unsustainable due to the lack of supporting roads, rail, healthcare and social infrastructure. Local neighbourhood plans, democratically supported by residents, already contain provision for the sort of organic, sustainable housing growth that we need. Out of the EU, with a points-based immigration scheme, and with an ageing, if not actually shrinking, population, the types and locations of the dwellings our society will need in future are very different from those being proposed today.

This is a Budget for business, for growth, and for Britain. It seizes the opportunity and it gets it done. I believe we are at the start of a new renaissance of British businesses seizing and leading in all of the sectors that will define the economic winners of the future.

Government Support for Business

Andrew Griffith Excerpts

Wednesday 26th February 2020 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Griffith (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Government support for business.

It is a pleasure to hold this debate under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I declare an interest as a former member of the boards of Sky and Just Eat. I also recently visited the US on an all-party parliamentary group visit in the company of British-based space businesses.

The timing of the debate is auspicious. It falls in the narrow window of time during which we will decide how to make our way in the world, liberated from the chains and anchors of a protectionist trading bloc that has often poorly served the entrepreneurial and fast-growing nature of the businesses with which the United Kingdom is blessed. The good ship GB is tugging at its moorings with upward buoyancy and a new captain, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, standing astride its helm. Like my hon. Friend the Minister for Business and Industry, who is in his place, the Secretary of State has personal roots that stretch beyond these shores into the overseas markets that represent an outsized opportunity to create growth and employment for generations to come.

To a degree, we have the wind at our backs. Our exports are growing. We are the world’s 10th largest exporter, despite not ranking in the top 20 most populous countries. Our economy has grown for nine straight years. We are Europe’s leading destination for foreign direct investment, attracting more capital than France and Germany put together. But we must not be blind to the challenges. We are approaching the end of a decade-long recovery cycle. Globally, protectionist forces are in the ascendancy. We must not repeat the mistakes of growth built on the shaky foundations of too much debt or imported cheap labour.

Our natural advantages as a location to start, grow and run a business are immense: we have a world-class legal system with a strong respect for the rule of law; we sit between the Asian and American time zones; we have a flexible and educated workforce; and, of course, English is our own, but increasingly the world’s, language. In fact, 20% of the world’s population of 1.2 billion people now speak English. There are more English speakers in China than people in England. English is the official language of the European Union, the United Nations, the African Union and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The world is pregnant with opportunity, so what support does business need from the Government?

In my experience, business needs the Government to do three things: to facilitate access to markets for our products and services; to remove points of friction and barriers to doing business; and to provide the right fiscal framework. I spoke recently in the global Britain debate—as did you, Mr Bone—on facilitating access to markets. I talked about the opportunity to help the 90% of British firms that do not export to do so through better market access, more boots on the ground and having more of Her Majesty’s trade commissioners, and by expanding the export credit guarantee scheme and getting the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and our aid policy to support British businesses.

Rather than revisit that point, I will turn to my second point about the important role that the Government can play in removing points of friction and knocking down barriers to doing business. The only way to truly level up the whole of the United Kingdom is with an enterprise-led renaissance. It is only business that will create the real jobs, opportunities and wealth that will make our future school and university leavers look askance at the idea of ever leaving our great northern cities to move south. Investment in infrastructure can provide the connective tissue, but it is business that fires the neurons between the nodes and provides a two-way flow of activity, motion, growth and employment.

There is no more productive and supportive infrastructure for small businesses than making gigabit broadband a reality by 2025, so I welcome the former Chancellor’s commitment of £5 billion for that purpose. We must rapidly turn plans into action and promises into reality. There is no time to waste, with just under 50 months to go and a huge amount of planning, procurement, construction and connection to be done. I strongly welcome the decision by West Sussex County Council last week to commit funding to projects under its full fibre programme and to shift that to the next phase of delivery for businesses across West Sussex.

My hon. Friend the Minister shares my enthusiasm for reducing the burden of regulation on small business. I do not know how familiar he is with the Better Regulation Executive within his Department, but this is the perfect time to give that initiative a much-needed boost. In a measure that is bound to prove popular with its members, he should send it on a round-the-world fact-finding trip to see the excellent work that is being done in New Zealand, Australia, the US, Singapore and, although it pains me to say it, France.

I congratulate the Minister on his new business support campaign to bring all the support together in one place at businesssupport.gov.uk, which is just the sort of practical measure that business needs. I encourage the Government to go further and to look again at a merger between Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and Companies House to give business a single online identity and a true one-stop shop.

There is also room for a modern industrial policy that is as much about knocking down barriers to scaling fast as it is about picking winners. It should focus on a small set of opportunities, each capable of spawning multibillion-pound industries, and making sure that when we get behind something, we align everyone behind it, from No. 10 down.

I commend the support that the Minister’s Department is already giving to genomics, artificial intelligence, space, fusion, zero-emission mobility and quantum computing. With the National Physical Laboratory, the Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst, the Faraday Institution and the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, it is no exaggeration to say that the UK is genuinely world-leading in each of those areas. UK-based companies are at the heart of the technology that the Solar Orbiter satellite probe, which blasted off into space last month, will carry all the way to the sun. When quantum physicists the world over want lasers with the purest light, they come here.

But others are catching up fast. It is equally true to say that the next 24 months are critical and will determine whether we succeed or the opportunity is lost to us forever. As the UK is such an attractive place to do business, we should be competitive, but have the self-confidence not to compete on always having the lowest rate of tax. As those of us who have lived the reality of business know, the burden of tax is about much more than the rate; it is about complexity, certainty and the approach to compliance.

There is an opportunity to unleash further potential from Britain’s businesses. The World Bank ranks us eighth in the world for ease of doing business, but only 27th for ease of paying taxes. How have we managed to create, but not to have solved, such complexity? To simplify it, we should tax an enterprise’s profits, not its inputs. To use a baking metaphor, we should tax the cake, not the raisins, flour and eggs.

There is an increasing recognition across the House that the current structure of business rates is a burden, particularly for small enterprises. It taxes businesses before they have had a chance to make their first pound of turnover, and penalises those that remain anchored in their local communities, such as on high streets in the small market towns of Arundel, Hurstpierpoint, Storrington and Petworth in my constituency. That has rightly been recognised by a series of reliefs for the smallest and other particular types of business, but I welcome the commitment to a fundamental review. I encourage the Minister to be a radical and uninhibited voice for business in that review, as I shall be. It is my belief that in the 21st century huge benefits would flow from unifying the income tax and national insurance regimes and from clarifying once and for all the ambiguities that lie around employment status. Perhaps the Minister will raise that with the Chancellor as well.

This is a critical subject at a critical time. We may never have such a window of opportunity again. The business leaders and entrepreneurs to whom I speak every day have placed their trust in us. We could be at the start of a new renaissance of British businesses seizing and leading in all the sectors that will define the economy in the 21st century; of knocking down barriers to enterprise and inspiring a new generation of entrepreneurs in every corner of the country and from every country of the globe to base themselves here; of rekindling the swashbuckling spirit and appetite for risk that saw our ancestors sail over the edge of the oceans in pursuit of profits from new markets. Or we could fail. We could be too timid in our ambition, too encumbered in our thinking and too slow to seize the opportunity. We must be the change we wish to see. Now is the time. The opportunities are tantalising and tangible, and they could be ours for the taking.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Nadhim Zahawi)]

It is an absolute pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith) and for North Norfolk (Duncan Baker). The quality of Conservative Back-Bench Members is clearly incredibly high. If the subs bench is of this quality, it keeps Ministers on their toes to keep performing. That is one great outcome of the general election where the Prime Minister Boris Johnson led us to that wonderful victory.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs on securing this debate. I assure the House that the Government are committed to supporting business. Of course, seizing opportunities now that we have left the EU is absolutely crucial to that. As my hon. Friend rightly pointed out, we will soon have a new relationship with our European friends, inspired by our shared history and values. We will have recovered our economic and political independence, which will enable us to control our own laws and of course our own trade—that is clearly what he is so passionate about. We will be able to strike new trade deals with partners around the world, helping our small and large businesses to export and grow on the global stage.

Hon. Members do not need to take my word for it, or that of my hon. Friend. The Global Entrepreneurship and Development Institute ranks the UK as the second most entrepreneurial economy in Europe and the fourth most entrepreneurial in the world. We rank higher than all other G7 countries except Canada on the World Bank’s “starting a business” list, although I take on board my hon. Friend’s comments about the ease of taxation, where we do less well. As someone who has started and run my own business, I can say that the UK is a great place to do so.

As my hon. Friend points out, we should remove friction and barriers to doing business and support our companies and entrepreneurs to succeed. That is why no permission is required to establish a business in the United Kingdom, there are no minimum capital requirements, and new companies can be registered online within just 24 hours for as little as £12. That is why, as my hon. Friend mentioned, only last week we launched a new website, businesssupport.gov.uk, which brings together information, support and advice for small businesses. It is why programmes operated by the Government-owned British Business Bank are supporting firms with finance. As of December 2019, more than £7 billion has been delivered to support over 91,000 small businesses in the UK, including £730,000 to 76 entrepreneurs in my hon. Friend’s constituency. Given his energy and how assiduous he is, I am sure he will endeavour to meet each and every one of the 76 beneficiaries of that support.

We are working together across Government to create smoother processes and the best environments for business, and I am pleased to say that we have already gone a long way towards integrating the customer interface with Companies House and HMRC. The streamlined company registration service was launched in 2018; it allows new companies to incorporate and to register for PAYE and corporation tax through a single portal. As my hon. Friend rightly reminded us, there is undoubtedly more work to be done to reduce the burden of tax, but HMRC is making progress, including through establishing a new VAT registration service.

We have also committed to a fundamental review of the business rates system. My hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk quite rightly highlighted this issue, and challenge is important in this area. He is right to say that we need a holistic approach. The Treasury will provide more details about the business rates review in due course, but we have already provided reforms and reliefs to business rates worth £13 billion over the next five years. The Prime Minister has announced a towns fund of over £3.5 billion, including an accelerated £1 billion to support local areas in England to renew and reshape town centres and high streets. Through the taskforce giving expert advice on how to adapt and thrive, we are supporting local leaders and encouraging them to think differently about their high streets and to discover their unique selling points.

[Andrew Griffith]

May I contrast the Minister’s comprehensive programme of activity that is designed to improve the lot of small businesses in this country with the paucity of attendance on the Opposition Benches? Not a single member of any of the Opposition parties has deigned to grace us with their presence this morning.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

It is a shame and disappointing not to see any representation.

As part of my personal mission to improve the business environment, I am working across Government, including with the Department of Health and Social Care, on life sciences, which my hon. Friend described as one of the real future growth areas for jobs in our country, supporting collaboration across industry, Government and the NHS. With the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, we are developing plans to level up the regions across our great nation, with business and the economy at the heart of our plans.

My hon. Friend made an astute point about the importance of regulation and broadband access to business. Our pioneering regulatory regime has made the UK the go-to location for science, research and innovation for decades, and we are absolutely committed to learning from international best practice. The Better Regulation Executive has recently invited the OECD to undertake a review of our international regulatory co-operation, which will be published soon, but my hon. Friend makes a good point about getting them on an aeroplane to visit places such as Singapore or, dare I say, just across the channel in France. We are also committed to delivering nationwide coverage of gigabit-capable networks as soon as possible. The Prime Minister made that promise during the election and it was delivered as soon as he was returned to office, with £5 billion of public funding to close the digital divide and ensure that rural areas such as my constituency of Stratford-on-Avon and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs are not left behind.

As well as ensuring businesses across the country have the conditions they need to thrive, we are supporting sectors to ensure UK leadership in the industries of the future—as my hon. Friend points out, they are critical. Our study into tech competitiveness is due to report to Ministers this spring. We are supporting quantum with initiatives such as the quantum technologies challenge, providing up to £153 million of innovation funding for industry-led activities. The UK National Quantum Technologies Programme is set to invest over £1 billion of public and private investment over its lifetime.

We are also supporting life sciences, making a huge difference to people’s lives and to the NHS and how it delivers for people. Life sciences is an area of UK excellence and personal passion for me, with almost 6,000 businesses, 250,000 people employed and annual turnover of £74 billion. The Government have invested around £1 billion in a host of ambitious life sciences initiatives, with around a further £3 billion pledged by industry, including through our life sciences sector deal, which is part of the industrial strategy. That is one of 11 deals to drive productivity, innovation and growth across 10 sectors in the UK, from artificial intelligence to offshore wind, including a combined investment of £3 billion. Today we account for 36% of all offshore wind production on this planet, and we plan to go even further. That is this Government’s ambition, and that is what we will do.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk spoke about the high street. We are committed to conducting the review that I talked about earlier, but the reforms have already delivered the £13 billion that I mentioned. Although I will not deny that there are still challenges ahead for the high street and for small businesses, there are also fantastic opportunities. We talked about the towns fund, but local leaders need to be innovative. I see that in some local authorities that are returning people to live on our high streets. For far too long, retailers took on leases on our high street but left the upper parts vacant. We need to do much more to encourage people to live and work on our high streets in order to revive them; if people are living there, they will shop there and do many other things. I see it in my high street in Stratford-on-Avon, where we are beginning to think innovatively about how we deliver that—for example, with Shakespeare’s school, the King Edward VI School, where the great bard studied and learnt his craft. We have been looking at how we bring international students into some of the vacant properties to study over longer periods in the summer. Again, that would help the high street to deliver.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs for securing the debate, and I wish we had a lot longer to debate this issue. We need to ensure that—across our country, whether it is the Scottish Government or our Labour Opposition—we take business seriously. Ultimately, it is the lifeblood of the British economy.

Question put and agreed to.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Griffith Excerpts

Tuesday 21st January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Griffith (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

Will the Secretary of State talk about the support that her Department is giving to quantum computing in the UK? This technology is growing at an exponential speed and opening up new opportunities in new sectors for the United Kingdom.

[Mr Speaker]

Just to help the new Member, his question should really be associated with the current question, so I presume that he is talking about Scotland as well.