Reducing Costs for Businesses

Stephen Kinnock Excerpts

Tuesday 11th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)]

As the party of growth and enterprise, Labour will help British business to weather this crisis and bounce back stronger than ever. As a passionately pro-business and pro-worker party, we recognise that private enterprise is the lifeblood of the British economy, which is why we would help to create 100,000 new businesses over five years and boost the start-up loans scheme. In our commitment to boosting productivity and growing the economy, we recognise the critical role of British manufacturing and the foundational industries that underpin it, such as steel. That is why Labour’s plan to make, buy and sell more in Britain will not only get our economy firing on all cylinders, but build our sovereign capability and help to achieve our net zero targets.

We need a more resilient Britain that can stand more firmly on its own two feet, because we have had 11 years of offshoring our good jobs and selling off our strategic national assets. Over the past decade, we have become over-reliant on countries that do not have our best interests at heart. That includes our reliance on China for personal protective equipment, lateral flow tests and even our nuclear power stations.

A Labour Government would do things very differently. Through our fully costed plan, we would create a £600 million contingency fund to support struggling firms, including in energy-intensive industries. We would pay for it with a one-off windfall tax on North sea oil and gas producers, which have profited hugely from recent price rises. Ours is a fully costed, focused economic plan that can support businesses throughout this crisis and, in so doing, protect workers and their families. That is what the Opposition is all about—what a contrast with the complacency and inaction that we see on the Government Benches!

The Labour party recognises that long-term, sustainable businesses can provide those good jobs that not only provide a pay cheque at the end of the month, but offer dignity, meaning and purpose for working people—a sense of being part of something bigger. We rightly cheered and applauded key workers on our doorsteps throughout the pandemic; let us never forget that many of them work in the private sector. I think of the factory workers and steelworkers in my Aberavon constituency who kept the show on the road, and of the pride that they feel in powering our country forward. The Labour party will always stand up for those values: dignity and respect for workers, opportunity for business to grow and flourish, and a commitment to building a higher growth, more resilient Britain that can stand more firmly on its own two feet.

The British people are tiring of low-growth Tory Chancellors. Labour has a plan to get Britain firing on all cylinders. Labour is truly back in business.

[Several hon. Members rose—]