John Pugh
Main Page: John Pugh (Liberal Democrat - Southport)
Michael Fallon
I would be happy to do so, but I hope my hon. Friend will not be too gloomy about the state of the high street. He will know that, in the most recent year for which we have figures, some 22,900 store-based retailers opened and 21,000 closed—more stores were set up than were closed.[Official Report, 18 June 2013, Vol. 564, c. 3MC.]
John Pugh (Southport) (LD)
Is it not time that we looked at the impact of business rates on the high street, and particularly at the glacial speed of appeals and revaluations?
Michael Fallon
My hon. Friend will know that we have doubled the small business rate relief for the past three and a half years, which has helped more than 500,000 businesses. In the Growth and Infrastructure Act 2013, we postponed the revaluation to give businesses more certainty—a larger number of them were forecast to lose under the revaluation than would have gained.