Supporting Small Business

Stephen Flynn Excerpts

Tuesday 19th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Flynn (Aberdeen South) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans), who gave a very impassioned speech about his constituency.

I have been somewhat struck by much of the debate, which has rightly focused on non-domestic rates. In that regard, we know that non-domestic rates is a devolved matter in Scotland and that the Scottish Government have made the decision that the retail and hospitality sector will continue to have a full exemption from rates until the end of this financial year, in contrast to the supposed party of business on the Government Benches. However, there is one huge issue—a massive elephant in the room—that I was astonished that the shadow Chancellor did not talk about. Indeed, very few Members in this Chamber have spoken about the issue: the obvious difficulties caused by Brexit. We have businesses up and down Scotland, and up and down the entirety of the UK, that cannot recruit staff and cannot get their hands on the goods they need to sell to their customers to keep themselves going.

Small businesses that want to export are facing exponentially longer delays in comparison with what happened before. I spoke to those at a local business in Aberdeen recently. They exports their goods, which is what they want to do—they want to grow their business, which is everything we want to see in our local community—and it has gone from taking a couple of days to almost six weeks to export a good to the European Union. If we are talking about challenges for small businesses and the really big issues that face them, yes, non-domestic rates is undoubtedly one of those—it needs to be addressed, and I think all politicians of all parties agree on that—but we cannot ignore Brexit or simply pretend that it is not happening, although that is what it feels is taking place in this Chamber. It is quite astonishing.

Beyond Brexit and beyond non-domestic rates, we also see small businesses having to deal with the rise, or the proposed rise, in national insurance contributions. They cannot get hold of the staff and they cannot get hold of the goods, and when they try to export it takes much longer than it should—and their non-domestic rates are an issue, particularly it appears for those in English constituencies—but they also now have an additional tax burden for the staff they employ, yet this Government still try to keep up the guise of being one that supports small businesses.

There is one more issue that is extremely pertinent that I do not feel has necessarily been discussed or given the full attention of this House that it deserves, which is the energy price crisis. We know that households right across Scotland and the UK are facing exponential rises in their energy bills. However, it does not just stop at households; it affects businesses too, particularly small businesses. This is something they did not expect to happen, yet this Government have come forward with absolutely no support for them whatsoever. We have tax rises, we have Brexit and of course we have an energy price crisis. It is a perfect storm of challenges facing our high streets, and I would respectfully suggest that the Government should have done better on each and every one of those issues.

That takes me to my final point, which is on bricks and clicks. It is about how we get rid of the difficult situation of having online retailers not having a physical presence within the local community and the benefit they reap from doing so. How we solve that has been discussed in this Chamber at length throughout my time in this House, but what I really struggle with is the Government simply saying that the digital services tax was enough and that that was the way to resolve the problem. Quite clearly, that was not sufficient, and it was never going to be sufficient.

While we have a situation in which someone can sell their goods online cheaper than they can in a store, ultimately businesses will move online. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Alyn Smith) rightly put it, that is not just a challenge that faces Scotland or the UK, but a much bigger challenge, and all the pandemic has done is to accelerate the difficulties in that regard. We cannot sit here and moan about the challenges facing our high streets if we are unwilling to take that issue head-on.