Budget Resolutions

Stephen Kerr Excerpts

Wednesday 31st October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

I am glad to hear that from the hon. Gentleman. I had a great visit to his beautiful constituency and he is right to say that it has skills that can be deployed in the space industry now. It also has the opportunity, working with local colleges, to develop and grow the skills that the space industry will need if it is to create good, well-paid jobs there in the future. This decision is great news for the north of Scotland and for the whole of the United Kingdom.

[Stephen Kerr (Stirling) (Con)]

I welcome the £200 million more that is to be given to the British Business Bank as part of the Budget, and also the announcement that a team from the bank is to be based in Scotland. The Secretary of State knows that I have an ongoing concern about the availability of quality patient capital, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises. What is his assessment of the current availability of that kind of capital?

[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend highlights a piece of advocacy that he has made personally and as a member of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee to ensure that we give growing businesses the ability to expand. That investment by and through the British Business Bank, particularly through its regional focus on Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, is very important. It should be close to the people in whom it is investing.

By investing in new equipment and employing new people, it is businesses that create jobs, not the Government. Businesses provide people with the earnings they need to live good lives. After the family and education, it is businesses that provide most of us with the best opportunity to develop and make the most of our talents. It is businesses that pay for every single one of our public services, both directly and by employing people. Governments cannot do such things, but they can stand in the way. There is no successful society anywhere in the world that is not based on successful businesses.

However, at a time when we need national determination to invest in future business success through a long-term approach, we have an Opposition whose would-be Chancellor describes business as the “real enemy”. A month ago in Liverpool—a city that drove out business when the hard left last seized power, taking a generation to recover—a chilling warning was sounded to the world: “If you dare to invest in Britain, 10% of your value will be seized forever without compensation. You’ll be taxed at the highest level in the peacetime history of this country. You’ll be trapped in a nightmare economy where, at a stroke, the state goes a third of a trillion pounds more into debt. The would-be Government fully expect a run on the pound and capital flight.” Whatever uncertainty there is over Brexit, businesses tell me time and again that their biggest nightmare would be to have the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Chancellor in Downing Street.

The choice could not be clearer. Britain has the chance to be in the vanguard of the most exciting developments in the history of global commerce and innovation, or to be shunned by investors as one of the most left-wing, anti-enterprise, ruinously indebted nations in the developed world. The aim of this project is to build a country in which our children and grandchildren can look forward with confidence to ever-stronger security and ever-growing opportunity. That choice has never been more vital for Britain, and I commend the Budget to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Kerr (Stirling) (Con)]

I rise to speak up for the Budget. It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Ipswich (Sandy Martin), who identified a number of important issues, which illustrates how there is always more to be done. There are some things in the Budget about which I am really enthusiastic, and there are some things about which I would like to ask Ministers questions.

I very warmly welcome the freeze on fuel duty. Private car use is not a “nice to have” in rural Stirlingshire; it is an absolute necessity. Will my hon. Friend the Minister look again at the extent of the rural fuel rebate scheme? There are some glaring anomalies in my part of the world, so I urge him to take another look at that.

I also warmly welcome the freeze on beer duty and spirits duty. That may sound strange coming from a teetotaller, but it is good news for Stirling, where there are more than 100 pubs and thousands of people are employed in the leisure sector. It is also good news for Stirling’s distillers and brewers.

I welcome the announcement of funding for universal credit, about which I have spoken several times in the House. Helping people to get into work and making sure that work always pays is something that we must get right. I also welcome the commitment to spend more on our defences. The Government recognise the changing landscape of threat to which we must respond as a nation.

I commend the Chancellor and his team for taking seriously the plight of the high street. As a Conservative I find it a strange sensation to welcome the very idea of a new tax, but the introduction of an online tax for internet giants will do something to level the playing field in respect of the massive online retailers and high street retailers. It is an essential and pragmatic approach that I hope will be part of an overarching modernisation of the business-tax regime.

I have mentioned before in the House King Street, one of Stirling’s main shopping thoroughfares that has many retail and leisure properties. Some of them, although not many, receive rates relief through the small business bonus scheme. However, they would all benefit from the one-third reduction in rates that we will see in England. That would save restaurants such as Monterey Jack’s or shops such as Contempo across the other side of King Street about £3,000 a year. Those are real numbers that could be to the advantage of retailers in Stirling, if the Scottish Government adopted the policy for England. It is time to take action on the high street. We need vision and imagination for the future of our high streets. I see so much going on in the Budget that Scotland will not benefit from unless the Scottish Government show some of the invention and imagination that we heard from the Chancellor on Monday.

I have three questions that I hope the Minister will consider. I welcome the £200 million for the British Business Bank and the setting up of a British Business Bank team in Scotland, but I remain concerned that we need to do more to create a bigger stream of high-quality patient capital. The British Business Bank is a good vehicle, but it needs a broader remit. There is yet more to be done to replace the European Investment Bank as a source of patient capital. What is the Minister’s assessment of the ready availability and quality of patient capital in our economy?

It is right that we have an industrial strategy for the whole UK and an industrial strategy challenge fund for the whole UK, but I seek the Minister’s assurance that the UK shared prosperity fund will be a UK-wide fund, unlike the national productivity investment fund. My heart skipped a beat when I heard about the £200 million to be invested in rural broadband—full fibre broadband; the real McCoy—but then I learned that it was to be funded by the national productivity investment fund, which means that Scotland will not get anything. I deeply regret that. I am looking for assurances from the Treasury Bench about what will be done to get rural broadband planted in rural Scotland. Currently, the Scottish Government are doing next to nothing. They are frustrating the work of connecting rural Scotland.

I will take this opportunity to mention a side issue, which is the misleading advertising that our consumers are subject to on “superfast fibre” broadband, when it is not fibre at all—it is copper. We should insist on these companies telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth to our consumers.