Employers

Ben Maguire Excerpts

Wednesday 11th November 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mr Peter Bedford (Mid Leicestershire) (Con)]

Before I came to this House, I spent 17 years in the private sector as a chartered accountant, working with businesses in the food and drink, construction and utility sectors. I sat with owners as they went through their accounts, line by line, working out whether they could afford to take on one more person. When this House talks about business owners, I think of people who put their savings and even their own homes on the line so that others can earn a wage. There are a great many of them. At the start of 2025, there were 5.7 million private sector businesses in the country. Small and medium-sized firms provide almost 17 million jobs—almost three in five private sector jobs—and family firms sit at the heart of that, employing almost 14 million people in the country.

The value of a successful business goes far beyond numbers. In my constituency of Mid Leicestershire, there is David North in Rothley, a family deli that has served the village for more than 50 years; Barrie Stephen in Anstey, a salon that started in one village and has trained stylists who went on to open businesses of their own; and S. J. Langton in The Square in Glenfield. Businesses like those give a teenager their first job and offer the apprenticeship that lets a young person build a career without leaving home. They are the shops that keep our villages alive, but how have this Government treated them?

In the Government’s first Budget they raised employer national insurance contributions to 15% and cut the threshold to just £5,000. The accountancy firm UHY Hacker Young found that national insurance bills for employers rose by almost £28 billion in a single year. That is more than the Government’s own forecast. When we tax something more, we get less of it. Today, small firms planning to cut jobs outnumber those that are planning to hire by more than three to one. Then came the Employment Rights Act 2025, with new costs and new risks for every firm and every new hire. Then there were the business rates, and the results were entirely predictable. The Federation of Small Businesses confidence index fell to minus 71 at the end of last year. The business confidence monitor of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales has now been negative for seven consecutive quarters.

The headwinds are getting stronger. Inflation rose to 3.5% in September, with motor fuel up by almost 30% on the year. The OBR has cut growth forecasts for next year to just 1%, and last week the Bank of England raised interest rates for the first time in over three years. Small firms looked to last month’s Budget to help, but the verdict of the Federation of Small Businesses was blunt. Those firms got

“nothing to ease sky-high energy bills, and nothing to make hiring someone more affordable.”

Employer national insurance remains at 15%—the jobs tax remains.

The Conservatives take a different view: Governments do not create growth, businesses do. Our job is to back businesses and then get out of their way. That is why we will scrap the family business tax and the family farm tax. We will introduce a permanent 100% business rates relief for retail, hospitality and leisure, cutting bills for a quarter of a million pubs, shops and high-street businesses. We will halve employer national insurance on jobs for those aged between 20 and 24, because the cost of giving a young person their first break has soared under this Government.

[Ben Maguire (North Cornwall) (LD)]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Mr Bedford]

I will not. We would repeal Labour’s Employment Rights Act 2025, replace IR35, review Making Tax Digital, scrap the packaging tax and simplify tax for small businesses and the self-employed.

I started working in my early teens, because if I wanted something, I had to earn it. This is the bargain that every business owner makes: they take the risk and do the work, and all they ask is that the Government do not stand in their way. Back them, and they will build this country. Tax them into retreat, and they will stop. The Government must decide which side they are on.

--- Later in debate ---

[Esther McVey (Tatton) (Con)]

Nothing highlights the fiscal failure of this Government more starkly than the plight of Poundland. The chain’s 600 stores and 12,000 workers sit on the verge of collapse, not because customers have walked away—they have not; sales grew by 6.7% in September—but because of the Government’s unaffordable tax rises, which make it impossible to run a business that works on slim profit margins. Those that work on slim profit margins keep prices down for customers. How ironic it is that a Government who preach about helping the least well-off and helping with the cost of living are forcing those firms out of business.

Business owners in my constituency are mystified by the damage that the Government have inflicted on businesses up and down the country. What I am asked by them most often is, “Do this Government not understand the harm that they are doing, or is it that they just do not care?” They have concluded that it is both. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the right hon. Member for Wycombe (Emma Reynolds), made sure of that when she said that employers were not working people—which, by the way, was a kick in the teeth for every employer in the country who is often at work before everyone else, and leaves work after everyone else. When the former Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Leeds West and Pudsey (Rachel Reeves), announced that she would raise business and employer-related taxes by over £50 billion by the end of the decade, she wanted money for Labour’s pet projects—benefits and net zero—and she did not care that they squeezed the life out of businesses. Labour did not care where that money came from. I asked the right hon. Lady on several occasions whether she expected the number of jobs to go up or down when she taxed them. She did not say. She did not know. She was shocked.

Labour does not seem to understand that you cannot tax your way to growth and you cannot spend your way out of debt. The consequences have been job losses and, combined with day one workers’ rights, fewer opportunities. The tax rate policy hit on family businesses was hard as well.

[Ben Maguire]

I have sat here for nearly an hour and a half, and I have not heard anything from Conservative Members about how they will address the elephant in the room: how to generate economic growth and rebuild trade relationships with our closest partners in the EU and elsewhere. Instead, we just hear criticism of the national insurance jobs tax. I completely agree with the right hon. Lady about that, but we are not hearing anything—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. This is a debate about employers, not about our relationship with the EU.