Chuka Umunna
Main Page: Chuka Umunna (Liberal Democrat - Streatham)
Vince Cable
I pay tribute to the work that my hon. Friend has done on the pubs issue. He has played a significant part in influencing the House’s thinking on it. I am sure he appreciates, however, that I would get into difficulty if I started talking about serious people in the industry being dishonest and untruthful. I will not go down that road.
Mr Chuka Umunna (Streatham) (Lab)
In the US, small business Saturday takes place immediately after Thanksgiving, on one of its busiest shopping days of the year, and celebrates small businesses’ contribution to local economies and encourages people to shop in them. It has proved to be very successful. A grass-roots movement of organisations, including the Federation of Small Businesses, representing hundreds of thousands of small businesses, has formed to make a UK small business Saturday happen later this year. Will the Secretary of State lend his support to this initiative, which aims to give a boost to the country’s small businesses?
Vince Cable
I will do whatever I can to boost the cause of small business. I was with the Federation of Small Businesses at the beginning of the week addressing many of those issues. In my earlier answers, I explained what we were doing for small business in respect of trade, apprenticeships and the business bank, and the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon), has talked about deregulation. It is a very wide agenda and we are delivering those aims.
Mr Umunna
One of the things that small businesses find most objectionable is the perceived preferential treatment that they see some large companies getting from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, in contrast to the heavy-handed treatment that small businesses sometimes receive. If HMRC is to clamp down on tax avoidance by large companies, which the Secretary of State says is a Government priority, transparency is key. Under the Companies Act 2006, large companies are obliged to disclose details of foreign subsidiaries to Companies House, but it appears that the latter is not properly enforcing these requirements. In March 2011, the Business Secretary said that he would carry out—
Mr Speaker
Order. What we need is a question, with a question mark—just one sentence. We have a lot to get through.
Vince Cable
It has happened; I have conducted it. The problem is very simple: roughly 4 million accounts are registered with Companies House and scrutinising all of them in detail is difficult. I have asked Companies House—it is now doing this—to ensure that the returns of the top-350 companies are analysed in detail for errors. If there are errors, our experience so far has been that they are very speedily corrected.