Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Gareth Thomas and Greg Smith(3 weeks, 2 days ago)
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Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)
Yesterday, the owner of the hugely popular Rumsey’s, which is celebrating 21 years on Wendover high street in my constituency, emailed me to say:
“We estimate the changes coming in April will add 15% to our staff costs that we simply don’t have. Therefore we have had to sadly make redundancies, put in a recruitment freeze and implement staff hour cuts to offset this.”
With real-world testimony like that replicated up and down the country, will the Minister finally acknowledge that an urgent change of course is needed to support high streets, scrap the employer NI rise, save jobs and protect communities?
Gareth Thomas
I gently say to the hon. Gentleman that it would be interesting to know whether he now regrets the enthusiastic support he gave the Liz Truss Budget, which did so much damage to our country’s public finances. Our Budget in October last year started the process of sorting out those situations. I looked with interest at his website recently, which has a “My plan” section. It is completely blank. Although that is probably better given that he so strongly supported the Liz Truss Budget—there is at least a bit of progress.
Greg Smith
Well, that was no answer to my question whatsoever. It is almost as if Labour Members have not realised that they are in charge and that it is their decisions that are having this impact. Let me tell the Minister something else that Rumsey’s reported to me:
“The reduction in business rate relief will leave me no choice but to raise prices simply to break even, further limiting growth and accessibility for customers.”
I just do not know how much more the Minister needs to hear to understand the scale of the problem on our high streets. He talks of business rates reform, but the only business rate change we have seen is the devastating cut to business rates relief, which is hurting high streets now. Will he reverse it?
Gareth Thomas
Had the hon. Gentleman’s party been elected, retail, hospitality and leisure relief would have come to an end. We have extended retail, hospitality and leisure relief. We have set out in the Budget our plans to permanently lower tax rates for retail, hospitality and leisure properties on the high street from 2026-27. We are taking measures to tackle crime and antisocial behaviour on the high street, which his party could have done more to tackle but chose not to. We are bringing in new legislation to end the immunity for crime on the high street where shoplifters steal goods worth £200 or less, and we are creating a specific offence of violence against retail workers to try to make it easier for businesses operating on the high street.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Gareth Thomas and Greg Smith(2 months ago)
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Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)
I begin by drawing attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
When consumer confidence is low, business confidence is low, and nowhere is that more visible than in our automotive sector, with UK car production slumping to its lowest level since 1954. Autocar magazine warned today that the zero emission vehicle mandate
“is currently the industry’s biggest headache, as…consumer demand is not there to meet the stringent regulations which are increasing each year.”
When policy fails, it is sensible to admit it and change course. Will the Minister accept that the ZEV mandate flies in the face of what consumers actually want, and that a radically different path is required to boost business confidence in our automotive sector?
Gareth Thomas
No, I do not accept that, and I would gently remind the hon. Gentleman that the policy to which he has referred was introduced by his party. I recognise that there are many aspects of the Conservative party’s record about which he and his colleagues are probably embarrassed. The Liz Truss Budget—which the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith), helped to write—did huge damage to our country and to consumer confidence. The measures that the Chancellor announced yesterday, for example, will drive growth forward, and that is one of the reasons why businesses backed them so strongly yesterday.
Greg Smith
It normally takes longer than six months for a Government to drift that far from reality. The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders has predicted that just 775,000 cars will roll off production lines in 2025, compared to 1.3 million in 2019. Today’s edition of The Telegraph reports:
“The slump has been accelerated by a slowdown in demand across Europe, particularly by drivers shunning new electric vehicles”.
Why does the Minister persist in a policy to undermine our automotive businesses by forcing them to make a product that people just do not want to buy? Is it not time to get the state out of the way, let our innovators innovate, and boost automotive businesses’ confidence by letting them deliver to actual consumer demand?
Gareth Thomas
The hon. Gentleman seems to have forgotten the extra investment that Nissan has announced, and the extra investment that has been announced by a number of other car manufacturers. He and his colleagues were very clear in opposing the measures that we took in the Budget, including measures that backed investment in the automotive sector, and they set out no plans to pay for that investment. I gently encourage him to reflect a little further on the mistakes that his party made in government, which have caused some of the problems that we are having to sort out now.