Amendment of the Law

Bob Stewart Excerpts

Wednesday 21st March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend share my hope that we can bring corporation tax down again next year? That would really help business. Does my hon. Friend agree?

[Brandon Lewis]

Absolutely. That is why I welcome the Chancellor’s comment today. The further and the faster we can go on that, the more welcoming we will be for business, and therefore jobs and economic growth.

I have one other suggestion for the Treasury to consider in the years ahead—how we deal with regulation. The changes to planning will be a massive advantage to businesses. One of the attractions of the enterprise zones is how they make planning so much easier by freeing it up. We can do more on regulation. One in, one out is a great aspiration, but it depends on what the one coming in is. There is a strong argument for looking at the billions of pounds a year that business has to spend on dealing with regulations, and targeting a value figure to cut the cost of regulations in this country.

I welcome the Chancellor’s statement about creating certainty for decommissioning, particularly for the oil and gas industry. That will be widely welcomed by the industry and I am sure it will be welcome in Great Yarmouth, as we have a huge number of businesses working in that field, developing and investing massively in our country and offering more jobs and more employment. It further builds on the opportunities for the New Anglia enterprise zone.

To see the benefit for business, we need strong, growing, improving infrastructure. I appreciate the work that the Government have done and the announcement last year of the dualling of the A11, which will open up that corridor of economic growth right through East Anglia, particularly in Suffolk and Norfolk. I make a small plea for something on which the Norfolk and Cambridgeshire Members of Parliament are working closely—to open up the spine that the A11 joins, with the full dualling of the A47 from Great Yarmouth through to Peterborough. We will continue to build the case for that and the economic growth that it would bring.

The Budget brings further benefits through the mobile infrastructure fund. The A143 from Great Yarmouth to Haverhill will benefit. The Growing Places fund will put almost £6 million into the New Anglia enterprise zone. Both of those provide more beneficial opportunities for business. As well as unlocking infrastructure growth, we should turn our attention to unlocking growth in the construction industry, which is a huge employer. We need more homes and more infrastructure to be built.

Employees and customers must be able to get from their base to the marketplace, and rail infrastructure can play an enormously important part in that. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman) is working hard on some ideas about how to take that forward. He is to be congratulated, and I know he will speak in the House shortly. Through the work being done by the Department for Transport and supported by the Treasury, we have a further opportunity to unlock economic growth. We have just over 2,500 railway stations across the country, many of which we would all like to see regenerated and improved. Dealing with them as real estate rather than just as transport hubs would allow us to unlock up to £27 billion of business for the construction industry.

It is important that that kind of infrastructure develops and grows so that people can get to the marketplace quicker and businesses can transport their goods, products and customers from their bases to where they need to be faster. Broadband will open up communications and be a hugely important part of that, particularly for areas, such as Norfolk, with rural hinterlands where the transport infrastructure is not as good as we would like it to be. Broadband communication could make up for that deficit, so the target of 2015 is very welcome in Norfolk.

We have huge opportunities for growth. This Budget knits together work done by a number of other Departments and the past few Budgets and presents a real opportunity to encourage business to grow. It sends a strong message to business that this country is not only open for business, but clearly working hard to create the infrastructure and environment in which business and business people can flourish, and I welcome that from the Treasury.