Reducing Costs for Businesses

Debate between Jonathan Reynolds and Toby Perkins

Tuesday 11th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I will proceed.

I know many Government Members are uncomfortable hearing it, but it is true to say that the Conservatives have become a high tax party because they are a low growth Government, and there is no plan that I can see to change that. In fact, most of the decisions the Government take tend to make things worse. Raising taxes, failing to deliver on transport promises and tearing up the existing industrial strategy are not the ways to increase productivity, growth and wages.

We used to talk about the danger of industrial strategy being the Government trying their hand at picking winners. This Government’s strategy is better described as kicking winners. Not a week goes by without some Government Minister trying to drag our world-class universities into their desperate culture wars, instead of recognising the pioneering research that, among other things, gave us the vaccine. There is the Brexit deal the Government negotiated that delivered none of the market access our financial services industry asked for, and which has put bureaucracy and red tape in the way of British exports.

If we are to meet the challenges of the future, it will take a lot more ambition than this Government have so far shown, and it will require a change of course in several areas. It will require reforms—significant reforms—such as the replacement of business rates that we have proposed, and policies that incentivise long-term growth and investment over slogans such as levelling up, or unproven flights of fancy such as freeports.

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way and really pleased to come in when he is talking about business rates because for both the hospitality sector and the retail sector—two sectors that are crucial in my constituency and so many others—business rates are one of the biggest barriers to growth and to survival.

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I am particularly pleased I gave way to my hon. Friend because I drive through Chesterfield when I am going from Stalybridge to London, and I pay tribute to him and his local colleagues for the work they have done. He is absolutely right that our promise on business rates is to replace an outdated system that does not work with one that is fit for the future. That means rebalancing rates so that bricks-and-mortar businesses do not lose out to online firms and making sure we encourage, rather than disincentivise, investments in new plant and machinery.

UK's Nuclear Deterrent

Debate between Jonathan Reynolds and Toby Perkins

Monday 18th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his speech. He will have heard, as I have done, the case that many people have put to Labour MPs—that they do not back unilateralism, but would prefer an alternative nuclear weapons platform. What consideration did he give to those points when he represented us on the Front Bench?

[Toby Perkins]

That is a very important point. In fact, the Government tried to come to precisely that conclusion on behalf of the Liberal Democrat allies in the previous Government. The truth of the matter is that having a ballistic missile system based on submarines is crucial to ensuring that it is undetectable by our adversaries and that it provides a genuine and creditable deterrent in relation to our adversaries’ missile defence systems.

Labour Members should have confidence that the world-class technology produced by the very best of British manufacturing, which benefits suppliers in almost every constituency in the land—including, I am proud to say, at Cathelco in Chesterfield—is delivering the minimum credible continuous deterrent that we can deliver. It will aid global security and be viewed with great gratitude not just by the workers whose livelihoods depend on it, but by partners who are nervously watching our adversaries’ every move. Labour Members should know that they are voting in accordance with the policy they were elected on and in support of working trade union members and our heroic armed forces personnel; that they are contributing towards global security; that backing Vanguard is in keeping with our internationalist principles; and that it is the right thing to do.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Debate between Jonathan Reynolds and Toby Perkins

Thursday 24th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Toby Perkins]

Please accept my apologies, Mr Deputy Speaker. I shall make sure that I address you and hon. Members correctly in future.

It is right to talk about the choice that Labour made, which was to protect the jobs that people relied on and to prevent an extra 500,000 going on the dole. Labour’s choice was to protect the homes that people had saved up over their whole lives to be able to buy. Labour’s choice was to support industry and bring forward public spending projects to keep the construction industry working when the private sector was sitting on its hands. Labour knew that the price of salvaging those jobs, those homes and those businesses would be an increase in our deficit. We delivered a plan for the recovery, which is working, and a plan for reducing the deficit after the recovery had been secured in the following year. The hon. Member for Bromsgrove told us that we could not keep living beyond our means, but of course we already knew that; that is exactly what the shadow Chancellor was referring to in the previously attributed quote. He made it absolutely clear what our strategy was.

[Jonathan Reynolds]

Does my hon. Friend agree that there is something deeply disingenuous about the fact that the Conservative party supported our Government spending plans until 2008—before the economic crisis hit home? They believe that we are living beyond our means, but they supported our spending at the time.