Summer Adjournment

Jane Ellison Excerpts

Tuesday 27th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Jane Ellison (Battersea) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) and the hon. Members for Hyndburn (Graham Jones) and for Livingston (Graeme Morrice) on their excellent maiden speeches. May I pick up the point made by the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), who is no longer in his place, about the facility for a substantive response from a Minister to points raised in the Adjournment debate? In my capacity as a member of the Backbench Business Committee—I see present also a colleague on the Opposition side of the Chamber—and as this debate is taking place in BackBench Business Committee time, I will report that point back to the Committee in time for our evidence seminar in September.

I hope that the House will not adjourn until it has considered the matter of business rates and particularly their impact on small businesses, shops and restaurants in Battersea and other parts of Wandsworth. I am delighted that the coalition Government have signalled their support for small business through a number of proposals, not least the scrapping of the planned rise in employers’ national insurance and the commitment to seek a way to make small business rate relief automatic. Although it is very welcome, the latter move will have relatively little impact in a London constituency such as mine in which business rates are so high, reflecting their proximity to central London but without the footfall of central London.

I should like to ask the Government to go further over this Parliament, as the localism agenda gathers pace, and consider giving local councils a greater role in setting local business rates. This issue was thrown into sharp relief by the dreadful impact on my constituency of the business rate revaluations of 2009 and 2010, by which London was particularly badly hit. Many businesses and shopping areas such as Northcote road, Old York road, St John’s hill, Battersea Park road and Lavender hill have struggled to survive those rises, which were often of more than 100%. The number of empty shops and restaurant fronts bears testimony to the fact that some businesses lost that struggle.

Wandsworth council has been innovative in the face of the difficulties caused by the ending of transitional relief last year and it remains the only council in London that runs a hardship scheme for small businesses. To date, that scheme has helped more than 50 local firms to save money on their bills and stay afloat, the result of which is that they are still paying tax and employing people. Innovative councils could do even more if they had the power to set some or all of the business rate instead of just collecting it. A borough such as Wandsworth with a low tax culture could bring real benefits to its businesses and we could avoid painful juxtapositions, such that in spring 2009, when a local launderette’s business rates increased by 250% while residents in the same road received a zero increase on residential council tax.

I am aware of the chequered history of local councils setting business rates, so that power might have to be earned, but local councils of whatever political complexion that have a clear grasp of the importance of small business to the local economy could play a significant role, through the setting of a lower local business rate, in sustaining existing businesses and encouraging new ones. I hope that the Deputy Leader of the House will agree that it is important to rebuild the connection between local authorities, local businesses, the services that those businesses receive from local authorities and the local residents who value those businesses. It is worth considering whether to restore some measure of accountability in the levying of business rates. That idea sits very comfortably with the Government’s commitment to localism and I commend it to the House.