Oral Answers to Questions

Connor Naismith Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Hinder (Pendle and Clitheroe) (Lab)]

13. What steps she is taking to introduce permanent reductions to business rates for high street retailers.

[Connor Naismith (Crewe and Nantwich) (Lab)]

17. What steps she is taking to introduce permanent reductions to business rates for high street retailers.

[Jade Botterill (Ossett and Denby Dale) (Lab)]

24. What steps she is taking to introduce permanent reductions to business rates for high street retailers.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Murray]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the importance of small, independent businesses in his constituency, and I am sure his sentiment is shared by Members across the House. Through our reforms, we are setting out to make sure that those properties with a rateable value of £500,000 or more pay so we can have a permanent tax cut for high street business. This category includes the large distribution warehouses used by online businesses, which will make sure that those online businesses make a fair contribution to ensuring that our high streets are the success we all want to see.

[Connor Naismith]

Ahead of Small Business Saturday, I congratulate St Martha Greek taverna in Nantwich on being the first winner of my Crewe and Nantwich small business of the month competition. Small businesses on our high streets, such as St Martha, regularly highlight business rates as a significant challenge, so what steps is the Minister taking to ensure that they can continue to thrive?

[James Murray]

May I extend my congratulations to St Martha Greek taverna in Nantwich? Given the time, I am feeling a bit hungry now that we are talking about food. I reassure my hon. Friend that our plans to reform the business rates system would see a permanent tax cut for retail, hospitality and leisure businesses. While I do not know exactly the details or the rateable value of the property in question, I am sure properties like that would be eligible for the cut. It is crucial that we support those much-loved local businesses. I am glad he is doing all he can to champion them, and I look forward to my invite.

Finance Bill

Connor Naismith Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 27th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Connor Naismith (Crewe and Nantwich) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Samantha Niblett) on a fantastic maiden speech. I am sure that her expertise in the tech sector will be an asset to this place.

I welcome the ability to contribute to the debate on the Finance Bill. I am wholly supportive of the measures announced in the Budget that form the legislation. After 14 years of Conservative mismanagement of our economy and the country, the public spoke on 4 July and gave a clear mandate to repair the dire circumstances we found ourselves in that left my constituents footing the bill.

The electorate knew and showed at the ballot box that they were in dire need of a grown-up Government that would not shy away from the hard decisions. We have heard many contributions from Opposition Members setting out the things they do not like about the Budget. If they support the benefits of the Budget, we have not heard much about how they would fund those measures or what they would cut.

My constituents voted for a Government who would finally ensure, after years of failure, that we would grow our economy, lower the tax burden on working people and restore the fantastic public services that once upon a time made this country a world leader. My constituents understand that there are difficult decisions to be made. They know that government is about making choices and deciding what country we want to be in the future. They made their decision at the ballot box, doing away with the Conservatives.

My constituents chose to no longer be a country with crumbling roads, a country that dipped in and out of recession, a country with low investment ultimately steered by the hands of the Conservatives in a chaotic fashion that clobbered their living standards. They voted for Labour, and with that they decided that they wanted to live in a country with monumental investment in its national health service, which will reduce waiting lists—we are already seeing the benefits of that—and rebuild key hospitals such as Leighton hospital in my constituency. They want to be in a country where their work is rewarded fairly and where minimum wage increases will put £1,400 a year into their pockets. Not only that; they want to live in a country—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order. I am going to make the request that I have made at least twice—this could be third time or the fourth. Please can Members debate the Finance Bill’s Second Reading, which is what we have on the Order Paper this afternoon? This is not a general debate on the Budget. We debated the Budget several weeks ago and we cannot keep covering old ground.

[Connor Naismith]

My apologies, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am about to move on to points covered by the Finance Bill.

My constituents want to live in a country that levels the playing field and ensures that working families have as much opportunity at all stages of their life, regardless of their postcode or their background. That is why I support the Government’s decision to end VAT relief on private schools, aiming to equalise educational opportunities. I know that many families work hard to send their child to private school, but I have never met a constituent who does not work hard just to make ends meet, and their children also deserve the very best education that our country can provide. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] Conservative Members say “Hear, hear!” but we do not often hear them advocating for state schools.

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

As a former state school pupil with three daughters in a state school, let me assure the hon. Member that, despite the caricature that sometimes he and others like to paint, not all Conservative Members are privately educated. I say to him quietly that it is not a choice of either/or; we want to see excellence and choice in education right across the board. It is not one against the other.

[Connor Naismith]

I thank the hon. Member for making that intervention. He says that it is not a choice between one and the other, but for 14 years under the previous Government we heard his side talk about state schools having to make difficult decisions and tighten their belts. As the husband of a state schoolteacher, I know that our state schools were severely underserved by the previous Government. The money generated by ending the VAT relief on private schools will be vital to recruit the 6,500 more teachers that we need in our state schools and to roll out free breakfast clubs across the country, to ensure that no child in education goes hungry.

[Damian Hinds]

Does the hon. Member know how many additional teachers were recruited in the last Parliament without putting VAT on private education? Does he know how many breakfast clubs are already in state schools in this country? There are thousands of them, thanks to the national school breakfast programme.

[Connor Naismith]

We have heard lots of contributions from the Opposition Benches about the fantastic record of the previous Government, but that does not stand up to the lived reality of our constituents. That is exactly why we saw the result that we had in the general election. The sooner Opposition Members come to terms with that result, the better.

[Paul Holmes]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Connor Naismith]

I am sorry, but I have given way several times already.

I welcome the Government going even further in the Bill to level the playing field and ensure that those with the broadest shoulders take the heaviest burden. That is why we need the legislation to close loopholes such as the non-dom status, change the furnished holiday lettings tax regime and provide more resources to HMRC to tackle the tax gap. That will help us address the financial black hole that the Conservative party clearly had no regard for, claims does not exist and has failed to apologise for. The Bill will allow us to fix what the Leader of the Opposition admitted today were broken foundations. I believe that the Government’s Budget and the Bill will be a vital starting point on a long road to recovery for this country. I commend the Government for their work and support this Bill’s progression through the House.

VAT: Independent Schools

Connor Naismith Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Connor Naismith (Crewe and Nantwich) (Lab)]

You might imagine, Madam Deputy Speaker, that members of the Conservative party would understand how out of touch they are on these matters, given that they were so roundly rejected by the electorate in July. However, unsurprisingly, they have demonstrated perfectly that nothing has changed, and it is business as usual as they leap to the defence of tax breaks for private education. This Government believe in equality of education for all our children, and this policy is designed for the betterment of 93% of the UK school population. Only 7% of children in the UK go to a private school—a far smaller proportion than in the most recent Conservative Cabinet, 65% of which, it is believed, were privately educated. Perhaps that tells us something about why we are debating this matter today.

Conservative Members campaigning against the Government’s policy couch it as an attack on the aspiration of hard-working parents. Perhaps they need to be reminded that the warehouse workers, cleaners, shop workers, carers, nurses and teachers in my constituency are also aspirational for their children. They work just as hard to provide the best opportunities for their children. It is offensive in the extreme for the Conservatives to suggest otherwise, and to suggest that they are less deserving of support from this Government.

I accept that a consequence of this decision may be that some people will no longer be able to send their children to private school, as schools might choose to recoup the cost of VAT through increases to fees. However, we should acknowledge the fact that private schools have implemented above-inflation increases to their fees year on year in recent times—over 20% in real terms since 2010—and this has had a minimal impact on children moving into the state sector. I say directly to parents: should our ambition not be that they could send their child to a fantastic state school that has the teachers and resources it needs to deliver the education their child deserves, and where they can excel both academically and culturally by mixing with children from a wide range of backgrounds and experiences that reflect the society in which we live?

The Conservative party was quite keen to promote and exacerbate a two-tier approach to the education of our children during its term in government—a system in which it is only state-educated children who have to accept tough choices and shoestring budgets. We have schools where the ceilings are propped up by scaffolding, schools where teachers are forced to buy basic school supplies out of their own pay packets, and schools where the workload and conditions have become so dire that teachers are leaving in droves.

I am delighted that we now have a Government who do not believe that state schools alone should be asked to make difficult choices—a Government who will end the tax break for private schools and invest the £1.3 billion that that choice will generate into our state schools, which educate 93% of our children. That is why I will be voting against the Opposition motion and in favour of state education.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call John Milne to make his maiden speech.