Business Rates

Craig Whittaker Excerpts

Wednesday 4th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Simon Danczuk]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right and he makes an important point; retail is the first rung on the ladder into employment for young people.

[Craig Whittaker (Calder Valley) (Con)]

This relates to fairness. I have frequented Rochdale on many occasions—in fact, I used to run a business on the high street there. One key thing about Rochdale is that it has a lot of empty shops. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the biggest imposition on retail on the high street was the imposition by the previous Government of rates on empty properties?

[Simon Danczuk]

I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman at all. My area has the national average for the number of empty shops, and no more. Those rates encourage and enable landlords to fill the empty shops, because there is a need for them to have somebody paying business rates.

The revaluation policy has saved London businesses vast sums in business rates. Hackett on Regent street, a high-end fashion retailer, has saved nearly half a million pounds on business rates. Smythson on Bond street, where the Prime Minister’s wife is an adviser, has saved in excess of £850,000 on business rates because of the lack of a revaluation. Even the Government’s own adviser, Mary Portas, has said that this is “bloody mad”. Rochdale is subsidising Regent street, and it is just not fair. The Minister challenged my figures earlier. I have them here, and he has not seen them before because they were generated only today. Greater Manchester local authorities—all 10 combined—are paying an extra £61 million in business rates because the Minister decided to pull the revaluation.

The other significant point I wish to make is that the Government should cut business rates and then freeze them. They have the money to do that, because by stopping the revaluation, they have saved £1 billion by not implementing the transitional scheme that would have had to be in place under the revaluation. The Minister should explain something to us: if £300 million is being used by the Chancellor to make a cut to 2%, what is the other £700 million being used for?