Supporting Small Business

Mike Amesbury Excerpts

Tuesday 19th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lee Rowley)]

I am grateful to the Opposition for using today to raise such an important matter for Members on both sides of the House, and I welcome this opportunity to debate it. In that spirit, let us start with where we can agree.

We absolutely agree that British businesses are hugely important to our high streets and communities across the United Kingdom. I have seen this in my first few weeks as the Minister for industry, speaking to and visiting businesses and business representatives up and down the country. I have seen it over my four years as a Member of Parliament, as all other Members will have done, discussing how small businesses can thrive and how, although high streets are changing, they remain the linchpin of our local communities. More broadly, I have seen it as the son of a sole trader who spent 40 years in business in his local community. To take the shadow Chancellor’s point about first jobs, I have also seen it as somebody who had a job on the high street in Chesterfield with an estate agent and who spent his dinner hours stocking a newsagent’s so that they could continue to trade.

Secondly, we can agree that we have been through an exceptionally difficult time. The pandemic impacted every single one of us at an extraordinary time of our lives, necessitating changes in the way we live, work and play. None of us had anticipated any of this prior to March 2020.

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Lee Rowley]

If the hon. Gentleman does not mind, let us just work out where we agree before we start talking about where we might not do so.

We did all this together as a nation and as communities, because we knew how important it was to get our society through these dark times. We can also agree that businesses faced particularly acute challenges. The challenge of 2020 and early 2021 was unprecedented for businesses. They had to close for periods, they were unable to trade in some instances, they had to change the ways in which they did business very quickly and then they returned to work. I am sure that everyone in the House—I know that the shadow Chancellor shares this view—has been humbled, as I have been, by the resilience of workers and entrepreneurs to keep their businesses going. They are the ones who have been straining every sinew on construction sites, serving us in shops and delivering vital goods. They have demonstrated an incredible level of resolve that we have never seen in peacetime, ingenuity and flexibility that we have never dreamed of and resilience that should make us all proud.

More broadly, we can also agree that business taxation requires review. That is why the Chancellor announced a review of business rates; it is why we have consulted on numerous changes to the existing scheme, although this was not acknowledged by the Opposition; and it is why the Valuation Office Agency is undertaking the latest revaluation, which will take place in 2023.

[Mike Amesbury]

I am sure it has not escaped the Minister’s attention that the Government have been in power for 11 years. This is not only about the coronavirus emergency. Businesses in my community, in Manor Park and Runcorn Shopping City, are desperate to move forward. Business rates are a broken system. Stop the dither and delay and get on with it—not another review but solid reform based on income going through the door. That is fair.

[Lee Rowley]

We have seen the Government make many changes over the past decade that have improved business conditions in this country and allowed businesses to continue to progress, and we will continue to do that. I know that ministerial colleagues will come forward with proposals in due course.

On the motion before us and the shadow Chancellor’s speech, it would be churlish not to recognise the extraordinary amount of support that the Government have already provided to business. Even as someone who prefers to focus on outputs and achievements in our country, I accept that the past 18 months were necessarily about inputs and keeping businesses going until they could properly trade again. To do that, we offered hundreds of billions of pounds of support from the taxpayer to provide one of the world’s most generous and comprehensive economic responses to the pandemic.

We enabled 1.3 million employers across the UK to furlough up to 11.5 million jobs. There were 1.6 million Government-backed loans, representing more than £79 billion of support. We paid out almost £14 billion in support to around 5 million self-employed people. We cut VAT for the hospitality and tourism sector. We waived billions of pounds of business rates for long periods at the height of the pandemic. And we brought in a range of regulatory easements to help businesses.