Economic Update

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Monday 17th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Finally, the prize for patience and perseverance goes to Daisy Cooper.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker; I now know what it feels like to have the knees of the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). [Interruption.] It is a fleeting thought, but it has gone.

Pubs and hospitality businesses in my seat of St Albans are really up against it. Suckerpunch is a bar that closed its doors just a couple of days ago because it can no longer continue. Others are clinging on until Christmas and we know that around the country hospitality businesses are saying that they are going to go into complete hibernation until the spring, and that means redundancies. Will the Chancellor confirm that he understands that hospitality is one of the sectors that is most affected and will therefore attract support, and will he look again at the broken business rates system, which is killing our pubs and high streets while letting multinationals off the hook?

[Jeremy Hunt]

Another of the promises I now vainly wish I had not made in the summer as to policies we should do is a fundamental review of business rates, so I have a great deal of sympathy for the hon. Member on that front and I will happily look at those issues. I do not want to promise we are going to make any progress in the next two weeks because there are so many other things we have to consider, but what she has said has been well heard—and I, too, congratulate her on her patience.