Small and Medium-sized Enterprises: Great Yarmouth
Debate between Nigel Evans and Brandon Lewis(1 year, 5 months ago)
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Brandon Lewis
My hon. Friend is spot-on. That challenge has been fed into me recently by a number of businesses: they have asked what more the Government can do to ensure there is collaboration between the Government and industry to deal with energy pricing. The rise in energy prices is one of the big challenges coming out of the problems of covid and particularly the abhorrent invasion of Ukraine by Putin. The Government have rightly put protection in place for households, and I congratulate them on that, but many businesses are still struggling with rate rises of up to 400%. They are often businesses working on small, single-figure margins—often of 1% or 2%.
The pub industry is tough: it is hard work making sure the client and customer is happy and has a good experience. We need to make sure that we have the support in place to not lose more pubs. We all know we are losing pubs and that lifestyles are changing. It is not necessarily the Government’s responsibility to fix all those issues, but we do need to be cognisant of what more we can do to work with the energy industry to ensure that we have the biggest possible impact for businesses, as some of their rising costs through inflation go back to the challenges from rising energy prices.
My hon. Friend is right, too, that the hospitality industry is one of the first to see any warning light for our economy, as, indeed, is the housing sector. If we want more houses to be built across our country, we need SME house building businesses to be building. I know some of the chief executives of our big house builders. One of them, who sadly has passed away now, always said to me when I had responsibility for the sector in government that one of the challenges today is that the regulation and the restrictions on housing make it very difficult for people to do what he and some of his competitors did in the past—those big house builders that started as sole traders—which was to borrow money and get through the planning process in order to build even one or two homes.
If we were able to invigorate SMEs in the housing sector to build those small numbers of homes in our villages and towns across the country—wherever we need them; in the right places and of the right quality—that would make a huge difference to our economy, because it has a knock-on effect. It is not just about the house, which itself improves social mobility; it is about everybody who is employed in building the house, and about the person who moves into it going to buy some paint or whatever else to decorate it. That all adds to the economic boost and growth for our country, and it is why we benefit by about 1% of GDP for every 100,000 homes built in this country.
Our hospitality industry is a canary in the mine showing what condition the economy is in, as my hon. Friend said. Those businesses I was talking about earlier—the larger and the medium-sized businesses—entertain clients and customers, and hospitality notices first if there are fewer of them, if those businesses are taking less time to entertain because they have fewer customers and visitors, and if we as individuals are spending less money in hospitality.
It plays an important part in the economy. People think of hospitality in places like Great Yarmouth as being just there for visitors, but it is there for business as well. In Northern Ireland, I spoke regularly to businesses who would use the hospitality pull of Northern Ireland as part of the sales pitch for their business in the engineering sector. It is a very important sector for our economy, and it thrives and relies on those SMEs.
The majority of that sector is SMEs. Big companies like Haven Holidays have a huge presence in constituencies like mine, but it is the small businesses that knit things together and support people across the villages and the coastal towns. I have seen that at first hand in Hemsby in Great Yarmouth, where almost all the businesses are independent or family-owned. They have come together to protect the coastline and literally defend the homes of people, and they have helped people who have lost their homes when they have fallen into the sea because of the coastal erosion we have had over the last few years. There have been some very dramatic circumstances. The businesses with a sense of passion for their community —the publicans and business owners in Hembsy—have come together to drive the campaign to make sure we get the support for the residents who need it, as much as for the businesses themselves and the visitors who come to enjoy the beach that we want to protect.
I have seen time and again the importance of SMEs across the whole of the UK economy, as I have outlined. Many people—the majority in our country—are employed in SMEs. I know the Minister is cognisant of this, but in everything we do we should always be thinking about what more we can do to help today’s sole trader become a small business, and today’s small business become a medium-sized enterprise, with a view to how they grow into the big plc of the future; because without doubt for me in Great Yarmouth, our small and medium-sized, predominantly family-owned, businesses are the heartbeat of the constituency, and they end up being the heartbeat of our country.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Before calling the Minister, I must say that it is rare and impressive to hear a content-packed speech delivered without notes, so congratulations.
Northern Ireland
Debate between Nigel Evans and Brandon Lewis(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Sorry Ian, but I think we got the gist of the point you are making.
Brandon Lewis
Yes, I understand the point the hon. Gentleman was making. He referenced a few of the things I outlined in my opening remarks about the challenges, the straw that broke the camel’s back and the issues around the protocol earlier this year. That is why we took unilateral action a few weeks ago, which he supported. We have been clear that we will take the action needed to make sure this works for Northern Ireland. Our focus is on working through the proper channels with our friends and partners in the EU to get an agreeable solution that works for those EU friends and partners we trade with as well as people across the United Kingdom, and enables the GB-NI trade that we all want to take place.
Brandon Lewis
I agree in large part with what the hon. Gentleman has said. It is why it is important for us to be working to find solutions for the impact of the outworking of the protocol on the ground and—he is absolutely right, and I absolutely understand this—the impact on people’s sense of identity. I welcome his condemnation of the violence we saw the other week.
On policing, it is important that people are clear that the PSNI’s work is to be there to support, keep safe and protect people of all communities on an equal basis. People need to have trust and faith in that, and I know the PSNI is focused on looking at what it can do to make sure it is delivering it. It is simply unacceptable, particularly with such a set of regulations, that any one community should be in a position where it believes it can see there has been a difference in treatment from one part of the community to another, especially with something so sensitive as family funerals over the last year or so. I absolutely understand people’s frustration, and I know the PSNI does as well. It is working to ensure that people are clear and can have confidence and trust that it is there to work for people across the whole community of Northern Ireland—equally, fairly and properly—to keep us all safe.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement and for responding to 31 questions in just over an hour. We are going to suspend now for three minutes for cleaning the Dispatch Boxes, so that after the ten-minute rule Bill we can go straight into the Finance (No.2) Bill.
Patrick Finucane: Supreme Court Judgment
Debate between Nigel Evans and Brandon Lewis(3 years, 12 months ago)
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Brandon Lewis
The hon. Gentleman has just highlighted the strength of feeling across communities on this issue, and understandably so. It is absolutely right that we are all clear that there are too many people from across Northern Ireland—and, indeed, the rest of the United Kingdom—who lost people and who still do not have the information about and understanding of what happened in the way that they should. We must all work to ensure that we are doing everything that we can to get that information, with a pathway to reconciliation for people. Any life lost is one too many, and none of us should be doing anything other than respecting the people who lost people through the troubles in such tragic circumstances and often in a way that none of us today could ever excuse.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I just want to remind everybody to take care that they do not make reference to any live cases that may be ongoing at the moment.
Brandon Lewis
I do not agree with what the hon. Lady has outlined. The March statement was the start of a conversation, which, as I said, we obviously paused; victims groups particularly requested that we pause it while they were dealing with that first core wave of covid. My view has been, as I have said all along, that I want to engage with civic society, as well as political parties and our partners in the Irish Government, on legacy—on finding a way forward that we can then bring back. I find it interesting sometimes to read what people assume is our position when I have not outlined it yet. It is important that we engage and listen to the people of Northern Ireland rather than making assumptions.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement and for responding to 25 questions. The House stands suspended for three minutes.
Virtual participation in proceedings concluded (Order, 4 June).
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Nigel Evans and Brandon Lewis
Brandon Lewis
I gently say to the hon. Lady that the programme that I outlined in the previous Parliament consisted of land that was built on or disposed of between 2011 and 2015. We have set an ambitious target of 150,000 homes for this Parliament, which we must reach, and I hope that she will support us in doing that. Let me gently point out to her that I am somewhat prouder of this Government’s record of delivering some 23,000 homes a year through public sector land than I would be of the Labour record of 1,000 homes a year.
Mr Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley) (Con)
6. What recent discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Education on the provision of free school transport by local authorities.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Nigel Evans and Brandon Lewis
Mr Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley) (Con)
5. What steps his Department is taking to ensure that the views of local residents are adequately represented within planning processes.
The Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Brandon Lewis)
This Government have radically reformed the planning system into a genuinely locally led process. Most significantly, through neighbourhood planning we have given local people a real role in shaping the areas in which they live and work; for the first time community groups can produce plans that have real statutory weight in the planning system.
Mr Evans
I am grateful to the Minister for that response. Ribble Valley borough council is a small yet beautiful local authority—Tory-controlled, needless to say. Although the core strategy has been passed, giving the local authority greater powers, it still fears that where a planning application is rejected and goes to appeal, the costs associated with that are disproportionate, especially to the smaller, rural authorities. Will the Department look at ways of ensuring that local authorities are not going to be clobbered in this way in future, ensuring that they are able to make the right decisions on behalf of local people?
Brandon Lewis
My hon. Friend makes a good point. Developers should be able to look at a local plan and have confidence that they can develop where land is allocated in that plan, but, as he rightly says, outside that they should find it the most difficult thing in the world to do if they have not got agreement with the local authority. It is absolutely right that his local authority has its local plan in place, and I encourage villages in the area and elsewhere to look at neighbourhood planning, to give even further protection to the areas over which people want to have control.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Nigel Evans and Brandon Lewis
Brandon Lewis
My hon. Friend makes a good point. Pub is The Hub is an excellent organisation. I was delighted to be able to put funding into it and to see it help pubs to diversify, whether it is through local libraries being part of the pub, or pubs offering school meals or providing lots of other services for their local community and making themselves the absolute heart of that community. It is a good organisation and long may it prosper.
Mr Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley) (Con)
In 1992, there were four pubs in the village of Gisburn and we are now down to one. Sadly, it closed a few months ago. The Star brewery wants to reopen the pub and more than 20 residents of Gisburn are very keen to see it reopen, but it is a listed building and there seems to be stalling of some sort of by the local authority. Will the Minister encourage local authorities and brewers to work together to look for compromises in order to ensure that local communities have the very heart of the community—their local pub—reopened?
Brandon Lewis
Absolutely. A pub like that can be the absolute heart of the community, providing a range of services. Pub is The Hub and the Plunkett Foundation may be able to help. I am certainly happy to meet my hon. Friend if that would be helpful. I encourage his local authority to look at authorities such as Norfolk, which has just announced a specific local scheme for Norfolk to help local pubs to stay open as a key part of these communities.
Local Government Bill [Lords]
Debate between Nigel Evans and Brandon Lewis(14 years, 1 month ago)
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Brandon Lewis
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. The hon. Gentleman just referred to the amount of time he has left. Will you clarify how much time he has left to take interventions on the statements he is making?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
This debate would have to finish at 6 pm, but it is always up to each and every individual Member whether they take interventions.