Global Economy

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown Excerpts

Thursday 11th August 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

Of course we need to fill vacant properties, but we also need to allow new development. I think that we all want to protect areas of outstanding natural beauty in our country, and I have a constituency in the green belt, but planning decisions in this country are so lengthy, so bureaucratic and so costly that almost every study of the British economy that has been commissioned in the last decade has identified planning as an obstacle to further economic development. I think that we need to simplify those planning controls so that we can—yes—protect the countryside, but also secure decisions in reasonable time that allow development to take place. That is why we have introduced the presumption of sustainable development into the planning system.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

What further help can the Chancellor give small businesses, 4.5 million of which employ fewer than five people? If a quarter of them employed an extra person, that would make a huge dent in the unemployment register.

[Mr Osborne]

Small businesses are, of course, the engine of job creation in our country. As I have said, 500,000 new jobs have been created in the private sector over the last year. That is the second highest rate of job creation in the G7. As for specific help for small businesses, we avoided the increase in small business taxation that the Labour party included in its last Budget.