Backing Business to Create Economic Growth

Dawn Butler Excerpts

Monday 18th May 2026 Commons Chamber

[Sir Mel Stride]

That is entirely right. The Conservatives know that work matters, and getting people off benefits matters. People’s mental health is improved by going to work, and by having the social interaction, routine and sense of pride and self-worth that comes with work. That is why the level of unemployment and the failure of this Government to tackle benefits is so appalling.

[Dawn Butler (Brent East) (Lab)]

I used to work in the employment service, and Thatcher encouraged us not to sign people on, and to instead put them on the sick. The Conservatives created a whole generation of people on the sick, just to manipulate the numbers. How do you like those apples?

[Sir Mel Stride]

All these flashbacks to the 1980s are a slightly desperate attempt to get away from the 2020s, I think.

The other thing that socialists love to do is borrow, borrow, borrow, and spend, spend, spend until they have run out of other people’s money. That is precisely what this Government have done. The Secretary of State mentioned the fiscal rules, but of course he failed to mention that in the run-up to the election, the Chancellor said that she would abide by our fiscal rules, and then promptly changed them, so that she could borrow more, flipping the definition of “debt” from public sector net debt to public sector financial liabilities. That allowed her to take her foot off the brake and borrow and spend even more.

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[Dawn Butler (Brent East) (Lab)]

In the time that I have, I would like to touch on two important areas with regards to backing business and creating economic growth. The first is the tourist levy. London is the gateway to British tourism. Of the 38 million inbound visits to the UK in 2023, just over half were to our capital. I therefore welcome the Government’s announcement of this measure, but I would like to see a little more pace and progress. That legislation could do so much for boroughs such as Brent, which includes Wembley stadium; I hope there will be a 50:50 split in the visitor levy.

Secondly, I want to touch on high streets, which I have mentioned in this Chamber a number of times. When we talk about growth and investment, we have got to think about where that comes from. We have to ensure that we have resilient local communities. If the Government committed to scrapping “aim to permit”, which is part of the Gambling Act 2005, there would be a dramatic effect on the growth of our local economy and high streets. “Aim to permit” means that councils are often powerless to refuse applications for betting shops, even if there is public protest and the clustering of shops, like there is in my constituency. As shown in videos I have made, gambling shops are disproportionately found in areas that are more economically deprived, so the Government would be carrying out a justice for all those areas if they were to scrap that measure.

I have asked people what they want to see on their high streets, and even people coming out of gambling shops did not say gambling shops; they said they wanted gyms, libraries and cinemas—literally anything but a gambling shop. This change would cost the Government nothing and could have been done in the King’s Speech—I am disappointed that it was not—but we can make progress. I acknowledge the Government’s gambling impact assessment, introduced through the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026. That is a good step forward in ensuring that local people’s voices are listened to, but it really is not enough. I wrote a letter to the Government that had almost 300 signatures, and I will continue to update that letter until the Government do what I ask—it gets more signatures all the time.

I warmly welcome the drive for economic growth. The IMF has upgraded the Government’s growth forecast, which is good, but we need to do better and think about where that growth comes from and who it will benefit. I feel that ending “aim to permit” will do exactly as I have outlined.

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[Ben Coleman]

I am most grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker. Such officials as gave that information could have looked again.

[Dawn Butler]

Does my hon. Friend remember when a former Tory Prime Minister gave a guarantee to small businesses that there would be no paperwork to trade with the EU, because they recognised how much of a disadvantage and how problematic it would be?

[Ben Coleman]

It will come as no surprise to anybody that what the previous Prime Minister said and the truth perhaps did not have the closest of relationships.

It is absolutely no surprise, looking at what has happened, that the London School of Economics found that new border checks and paperwork pushed up UK prices by more than 7% between 2019 and 2023, adding around £250 to our grocery bills. It is also no wonder that 20,000 small businesses, all with fewer than 10 employees, have simply stopped exporting to Europe—not by choice but because the costs got too high.

The war with Iran is making things even worse. It is pushing up energy and food costs around the globe. Our country’s economic security demands that we do all we can to reduce business costs and limit price increases, working with our European allies. That is where the European partnership Bill comes in. For months now, the Government have been negotiating a new sanitary and phytosanitary—food and drink—agreement with the EU. This would sweep away the certificates, checks and fees that have added so many costs to food and agricultural trade with Europe. The aim is to wrap that up by the next EU summit, but to bring it into force we need the European partnership Bill.

Under the SPS deal, multi-page export health certificates, phytosanitary certificates, port health authority costs and sampling costs would all go. The Bill will support that. It will also provide the framework to implement an emissions trading agreement, which will link the UK’s emissions trading scheme with that of the EU. That will give us a larger, more stable carbon market, support investments in new technologies and help us to decarbonise more efficiently. Together, the food and drink deal and the emissions trading agreement could add nearly £9 billion to the UK economy by 2040.