Finance (No.2) Bill

Debate between Priti Patel and Mike Kane

Tuesday 8th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

No. We heard from the hon. Gentleman earlier.

The last Labour Government ignored the benefit of expanding trade. Exports came up in the discussion. This Government have gone out of their way to expand overseas trade. The Chancellor is in Brazil this week at the beginning of export week. We are doing everything right to sell Britain overseas, and to encourage overseas companies to come here and benefit from the low rate of corporation tax, which Labour wants to destroy.

Putting up corporation tax does nothing to help small business, contrary to what Labour says in its shallow and feeble amendment. That only goes to demonstrate that the Opposition have no plan to expand our economy or create more jobs, growth and prosperity—creating those things is exactly the right approach that the Government are taking.

Amendment 2, which I obviously do not support, is completely irrelevant to the wider national debate currently, which is about sustaining growth in our economy, and expanding our economy with jobs, growth, prosperity, inward investment and exports. On that point, I heard a terrible diatribe earlier—an hon. Member said we are not exporting enough. In my county of Essex, the Essex chamber of commerce has helped more than 1,000 local firms, including many small and medium-sized businesses, in processing export documents and giving practical assistance. The value of those exports is well over £300 million. That is the message we want to send out to business of all sizes in the UK. I have no intention of supporting the amendment and support what the Government are doing.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel). I concur that it is great news that the Chancellor is drumming up business for Britain in Brazil, but I wonder what first attracted him to the Copacabana beach.

I know debates in the House can sound like statistical conventions, but we have only to look at the statistics to realise that the debate is important. Some 99.9% of all private sector business in the UK is in SMEs, which also account for 59% of private sector employment and 48% of private sector turnover. As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood) said, SMEs account for 47% of all private sector employment. Labour Members will know that growing private sector trade unions such as the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers and Community the union are picking up on that growth.

I was intrigued by my hon. Friend’s story about starting out in a corner shop. I want to tell a story about a firm in my constituency. In 1985, a young woman—a housewife called Kamal Basran—was bringing up a young family and preparing food for them in her kitchen. She was fed up that she could not buy quality Indian cuisine from any of the major supermarkets. She took out a £5,000 bank loan and started supplying food to local restaurants and businesses. In the past nearly 30 years, she has grown that business and hopes to post a £50 million profit this year. It has grown year on year despite the recession. She now has 220 employees. As a new MP, I had the great honour of visiting that business in my constituency just a couple of weeks ago. The package I got as I left was superb. I do not declare an interest—I distributed the goods to parliamentary staff and constituents afterwards.

That success story is an example of why SMEs matter so much. In polling up to the last general election, people said that their work prospects were the most important things to them after health and crime—work prospects were always No. 3 or No. 4 on the list. That is why the debate is important.