Small Business Saturday

Stephen Mosley Excerpts

Thursday 4th December 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

The subject of this afternoon’s debate is small business Saturday, which occurs in two days’ time on Saturday 6 December. The debate will be ably led by the hon. Member for City of Chester (Stephen Mosley).

[Stephen Mosley (City of Chester) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Hollobone, for the opportunity to highlight the crucial importance of having thriving, popular and successful small businesses in our towns and cities, and to emphasise the important role that small business Saturday plays in helping small businesses to achieve their potential. Small businesses are the lifeblood of our economy. They account for 99% of all businesses in the UK. They employ some 15 million people across the country and they account for half our private sector GDP. Small businesses play such an important role in our national economy that if every small business took on one new member of staff, we would eliminate unemployment overnight.

[Alok Sharma (Reading West) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this incredibly important debate. He is making the case for small businesses up and down the country, which will have welcomed some of the statements from the Chancellor yesterday. Does my hon. Friend share my view that one of the great bugbears for many small businesses has been the business rate structure? The small businesses that I have talked to in the past 24 hours really welcomed the Chancellor’s proposed review of business rates.

[Stephen Mosley]

All of us, as Members of Parliament, receive complaints about business rates from our constituents and those who run businesses. The cost of business rates comes straight off the bottom line of a business—straight out of profit and straight out of the money that people take home at the end of the day—and it has a huge impact on businesses. That is especially true in a constituency such as mine, where we have a thriving and popular city centre with very high rental values. The rateable values for small shops in the city centre are quite extortionate. I welcome the announcements about the reform of business rates, the extension of small business rate relief and the increase of the rebate for small businesses from £1,000 to £1,500 in April.

As our economy grows and evolves, so do our small businesses. Whereas small business used to mean the corner shop on the high street, it can now mean artisan producers on stalls at farmers markets, family-run restaurants and bars, an international e-business run by a student from his bedroom or a boutique clothes business run from the kitchen table by a full-time mum. The fact that small business in the UK is booming is great news for Britain, great news for jobs and great news for wealth creation. Across the country, record numbers of people are starting their own small businesses, and British entrepreneurs created a record number of new businesses last year. Research from the national enterprise campaign shows that more than 526,000 businesses were created in 2013, which was up from 484,000 in 2012 and 440,000 in 2011. We all want that trend to continue.

[Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. Will he join me in applauding the increased number of women who are setting up small businesses and the growth in female entrepreneurship in this country, which the Government have nurtured?

[Stephen Mosley]

Of course I will. Not only are women setting up small businesses in record numbers, but young people are doing the same. Chester university is running some fantastic courses to support entrepreneurs, which get young people out there so that when they leave university they will consider the option of setting up their own business. Young people, women and ethnic minorities are all people whom we want to help to set up their own small business, and they are all doing so in record numbers.

The Government have done a huge amount to help. As we saw in yesterday’s autumn statement, the Chancellor is willing to give even more support to small businesses. There is still a huge amount that local communities, local groups and local businesses can do to help themselves, because the people who most benefit from having successful, popular and thriving local shops are local communities.

[Simon Wright (Norwich South) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. Does he agree that Government-backed opportunities to highlight success, such as the great British high street awards, can play a really important role? The Lanes in Norwich was a well deserved winner of the city category of those awards for the vibrant reputation of its high street.

[Stephen Mosley]

Like many people in this room, I spent a good deal of time in Norwich a few years ago when there was a by-election in the north of the city, and I was amazed at what a beautiful city it was. Coming from the north-west of England, I had not been to Norwich before, but I was impressed. It is on my wish list of places I would like to visit in the future.

Research shows that for every £1 that is spent in a local independent business, 60p goes straight back into the local economy. Areas that have a high proportion of independent small shops have been found to increase social interactions between shoppers. People in such areas are twice as likely to say hello to other people on their high street. People who live near small shops are 16% more likely to be positive about their local high street than are those who live in areas that lack independent stores.

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. Does he agree that there are concerns about the number of empty shops in our high streets? In Walsall town centre, at least 26% of shops are empty. Do we not need to do something more for our small businesses in the high street?

[Stephen Mosley]

I totally agree. Shopping habits are changing. People are moving online, and they are increasingly using out-of-town shopping centres. We as community leaders, local authorities and other organisations must get behind our high streets to ensure that when people go shopping in their local high street, they are not simply going to the shops but are having an experience in which they learn something and enjoy themselves. It is incumbent on all of us—Governments and local authorities, but also businesses and local communities—to make sure that high streets are vibrant, fun and exciting so that people decide to go to them. Only if people go to shopping centres and provide the necessary footfall will businesses move in and take up the empty shops.

[Alok Sharma]

My hon. Friend talked about support, and of course we can all offer support, but there is Government support as well. I believe that the Government have been relentless in their support for business, and we all welcome that. The Government have all sorts of schemes to help small businesses. What more does my hon. Friend think that we in the House, or the Government, can do to inform people of those schemes and of the support that is available to help them to prosper and grow?

[Stephen Mosley]

My hon. Friend has got to the nub of the debate. As well as highlighting small business Saturday, the debate is about highlighting the support that is available for small businesses across the country. I will talk later in my speech about what the Government are doing. I am sure that the Minister is quite capable of banging the drum and telling us all about the good work that he and the Government have done to support small businesses.

[Mark Hunter (Cheadle) (LD)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. He is being generous with his time, and I hope that he gets the opportunity to proceed more quickly. I put it to him that although small business Saturday is massively important and a very healthy thing—that is why we are all here to support it—we really need communities across the length and breadth of the country to understand the need to support their local shops all year round. Small business Saturday is a welcome initiative, but by itself it is not enough. Retailers on the high street face a great deal of challenge, and we need to get more people to support local shops on a regular basis. Does my hon. Friend agree with me on that point? I hope that he will have the opportunity to say what more we can all do—not just the Government—collectively to support our local small businesses.

[Stephen Mosley]

I support what the hon. Gentleman says. He raises the points that I wanted to raise in my conclusion, so he is denying me all the glory of raising those issues myself.

By working together, local communities, local groups and local businesses can boost their small shops and therefore boost their local area. One of the most inspiring, exciting and successful ideas for doing that is small business Saturday. Simply, small business Saturday exists to support, inspire and promote small businesses. It started in the United States of America in 2010, and it has been a key feature of the pre-Christmas shopping period and become established on the first Saturday after Thanksgiving. Small business Saturday was conceived, launched and is still heavily backed by American Express, with the intention of encouraging shoppers to patronise small, local bricks-and-mortar businesses.

In America small business Saturday has been heavily promoted via a nationwide radio and television advertising campaign, with a heavy focus on social media that has generated more than 1 million Facebook likes and hundreds of thousands of tweets using the Twitter hashtags #SmallBusinessSaturday and #SmallBizSaturday. Many politicians and business groups in the US have backed the campaign, with many launching campaigns in their local area. Last weekend, on small business Saturday in the US, President Obama and his daughters, Malia and Sasha, went shopping at the Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington DC, where they picked up 17 books. Additionally, many small business owners in the US have started to run marketing specials on small business Saturday to capitalise on the boost in foot and online traffic, as most customers at this time of year are actively shopping for the Christmas period.

[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna) played a key role in bringing small business Saturday to the UK. The hon. Member for City of Chester (Stephen Mosley) is outlining a number of areas where small businesses in America have come forward, but does he agree that we can do a lot more and use small business Saturday to help our local businesses gain the confidence to come forward, market themselves more and feel that they can be much more present, and proud of their presence, in our communities?

[Stephen Mosley]

I totally agree. Small business Saturday started in the United States, and it is thought that last year US consumers spent $5.7 billion, which is about £3.6 billion, in small, independent retailers on small business Saturday. Following its success in the United States, small business Saturday first burst on to the scene in the UK in 2013. I am aware that the hon. Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna) was very much involved in bringing small business Saturday over to the UK.

[Valerie Vaz]

To make a link between the United States and here, we were lucky to have the Reverend Jesse Jackson holding up a sign for small business Saturday with my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna) in Walsall.

[Stephen Mosley]

I know how much the hon. Member for Streatham has been involved. He first learned about small business Saturday when he saw celebrities and high-profile people in the US tweeting about it. He, with Members from all parts of the House, put in a huge amount of work to bring small business Saturday to the UK last year. In the UK, small business Saturday has settled on the first Saturday in December, and it aims to have a long-term impact by encouraging shoppers to shop local and support the small businesses in their local area.

An independent community interest company, Small is Big, has been set up to run small business Saturday in the UK, and it endeavours to encourage organisations to support small business Saturday and get the word out about the day. Organisations such as the Federation of Small Businesses, the Association of Town & City Management, the Association of Convenience Stores and the Northern Ireland Independent Retail Trade Association have given their support and have encouraged their memberships to get involved. Last year’s small business Saturday gained widespread support and publicity across the UK in the newspapers, on TV and in social media.

Surveys show that 48% of UK customers were aware of last year’s small business Saturday and of the campaign’s aim to encourage people to shop small and shop local. The small business Saturday UK Facebook page gained more than 1.5 million views, and #SmallBizSatUK was in Twitter’s top three trending items all day. The campaign gained widespread support across the country, with 40% of local authorities also supporting the day. It is estimated that more than £460 million was spent in small businesses on that day alone, with 43% of shoppers deciding specifically to shop at a local store, spending £33 each on average.

Last year, small business Saturday gained the support of more than 200 Members of Parliament, including the Prime Minister and Members from both Front Benches. I was one of those 200 MPs, and I used small business Saturday to try to boost our local small shops and high streets in Chester. We distributed fliers and posters, and with the support of the local newspapers, we advertised both the day and special offers by many of our local shops. More than 400 local shops took part, and I started my Christmas shopping in the wonderful Chester suburb of Hoole, which has a fantastic reputation as one of the premier local high streets in Chester and is full of local, independent shops.

Running alongside small business Saturday, I was delighted to organise and run our first small business awards, which allowed customers to nominate and vote for their favourite independent shops and businesses. It was obvious that local people recognise the difference that these businesses make, whether it be the great customer service they receive or the high-quality products that the shops deliver. More than 150 businesses took part in the awards, and more than 1,000 local people voted for their favourite business. G&M Goold funeral directors in Vicars Cross and Monogram dry cleaners in Newton were the joint winners of my awards last year.

This year’s small business Saturday looks likely to beat all records. Like last year, we are seeing a huge push on the internet and on social media. The website www.smallbusinesssaturdayuk.com contains loads of useful information and promotional materials, such as digital packs of downloadable marketing material, including posters, logos and social media icons. There is also advice on running successful social media campaigns and a useful guide to avoiding the most common Twitter pitfalls—something some of our colleagues could do well to read. The small business Saturday team is using social media channels to feature 100 small businesses—one a day—in the 100 days leading up to small business Saturday, highlighting all that is great about small businesses. Foodies, an Edinburgh cafe, bakery and caterer launched with help from the Prince’s Trust, is today’s “small biz 100” company.

Alongside the online campaign, the small business Saturday bus is travelling the length and breadth of the country advertising small business Saturday and handing out promotional materials. There is also a big campaign in the traditional media, with many national and local newspapers already getting behind small business Saturday, highlighting the importance of Britain’s small businesses and backing the “shop small, shop local” campaign.

Chester will again be playing its part in ensuring that small business Saturday is a huge success. My office has produced small business packs containing posters and fliers, which we have distributed to small shops in the city centre and in suburban shopping areas. We have launched this year’s competition to find Chester’s favourite small business and distributed thousands of nomination slips, as well as allowed people to nominate their favourite small businesses on my “Championing Chester” website. Chester has a strong reputation as home to many successful small independent shops and I look forward to seeing the nominations and joining the celebration of our small business scene’s diversity and success.

Small business Saturday is an excellent way of highlighting the importance and success of small business across the UK, but the campaign, as we have heard, is about more than encouraging people to use small, independent local shops on one day a year. It is also about changing people’s mindsets so that they shop local and shop small every day of the year. Just as consumers need to be there to support small business 365 days a year, the Government also need to be there 365 days a year.

So far, as we have heard in interventions, the Government have an impressive record. I will briefly outline some of the welcome measures and support that have been provided to help small businesses thrive and grow. They include: the employment allowance, which has cut each company’s national insurance bill by £2,000, which directly benefits smaller companies disproportionately more than large multinationals; the reduction in corporation tax rates; the doubling of small business rates relief, and the welcome announcement from the Chancellor yesterday that that will continue after April next year. A £1,000 business rates discount has also been introduced for retail premises with a rateable value up to £50,000, which the autumn statement yesterday increased to £1,500 from April next year.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

We all know business rates are a bugbear for many small businesses, particularly in the high-street sector. What was the hon. Gentleman’s view on the Government’s decision back in 2012 to put off the revaluation of business rates? Does he think that that was a mistake, on reflection, or does he support their decision?

[Stephen Mosley]

I am delighted by the action that the Government have taken, whether it is the introduction of small business rates relief, the rebate for small retail units or, as we heard earlier, the decision announced yesterday to review the business rates system. I hope that the Opposition support the Government in achieving their aims.

[Toby Perkins]

In terms of the business rates, I am not clear what the Government’s aims are, other than having a review. However, I was asking the hon. Gentleman specifically about the decision to put off the revaluation of business rates, which will have had a significant impact on most northern communities, and probably on his. I would be interested to hear his analysis and whether he supported that measure.

[Stephen Mosley]

I was trying to keep the small business Saturday debate non-political to show what support exists across the House for small business in the UK, but if the shadow Minister wants to get political, I could point out why this Government inherited massive spending problems in 2010. Huge mistakes were made up to 2010. I do not want to go there; I want to keep this debate positive about what we can do to help small business going forwards. Is the hon. Gentleman happy with that?

[Toby Perkins]

I am happy to take that challenge, although I do not know why the hon. Gentleman feels quite so threatened. He was reading off a list of things that the Government had done, and one of the most significant decisions that they have taken over the past few years has been their decision on business rates. He is talking about business rates, so I asked whether he supports that decision. He should not necessarily see that as hostile; I am just asking him what his view is.

[Stephen Mosley]

I quite agree that the Government have done a lot, whether on small business rates relief, the doubling of rates relief or the rebate. I totally support those actions, and I support the announcement yesterday of a future review of business rates.

The measures on business rates and corporation tax allow small businesses to keep more of their hard-earned cash—money they can use to take on more staff, invest in new equipment, or simply pay down debt. To help small businesses raise the cash that they need to start or grow, the Government have also launched the British Business bank, providing up to £4 billion in funding for business on top of the successful start-up loans scheme, which has already provided £150 million to enable more than 20,000 entrepreneurs to follow their dreams and start their own small companies. I am sure that the Minister will highlight many more of the schemes that he and his Government have introduced to help small business in his response to the debate.

Since 2010, hundreds of thousands of new businesses have been launched every year, so that, as we heard the Prime Minister say at questions yesterday, there are now more than 760,000 more businesses in the UK. In my constituency of Chester, new business start-ups have increased by 300%. Small businesses have been responsible for nearly half the job creation in the UK. They employ about 15 million people and make up about half of our private sector economy. Small business has an absolutely fantastic story to tell, and small business Saturday is an opportunity for us all to shout from the rooftops about how important our small and local shops and businesses are.

Although the Government have done a lot to help, it is also crucial that local communities, groups and businesses come together and celebrate all that is great about our small businesses and the contribution they make to our economy and our high streets, because the people who benefit the most from having successful, popular and thriving local shops are local communities themselves. I will be shopping small and local in Chester this Saturday, and I hope that the Minister and other Members will back small business Saturday too.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

An excellent example for us all.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Mosley]

I thank the Minister for his kind words, but it is not just me in this Chamber who has experience of small business. Almost every hon. Member who spoke has such experience, whether they were brought up in a small business or have set up their own business, and anyone who has been involved in a small business knows how difficult that can be. There can be very good times, but there can also be difficult times. As we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Andrew Bingham), the person running a small business has to be the salesman, the accountant, the credit controller and the marketeer; they have to do all those jobs. I remember that when I was setting up my own small business, I had trouble sleeping at night when I realised that I had £6,000 of expenditure a month to pay out and no visible means of raising the money. For me, it worked out, but it can be very difficult. The more support that small business gets, the better.

There were some fantastic speeches today. The two that I will concentrate on are those by the hon. Members for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) and for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra), because too many times during this Parliament I have been sitting on the Government Benches and have heard Opposition Members paint a rather bleak picture of their constituencies. As a business man, as someone who would want to invest, I would think, “Why would I invest in a community that is portrayed as bleak?” Neither hon. Member did that. They both portrayed their constituencies as vibrant and happening, and they talked about the huge successes in those communities. I listened to them and thought, “Those are the sort of places where I would want to go; they’re the sort of places where I would want to shop; they’re the sort of places where I would want to invest and set up a business.” As Members, we all have the responsibility of championing our own constituencies, of encouraging investment and of supporting the businesses in our communities, and those two hon. Members in particular did an absolutely fantastic job today.

The single most important thing that came out of the debate was that vibrant communities need vibrant small businesses. By backing and supporting small business, we can create successful communities. If we take one thing from small business Saturday, it should be that we all have a role to play in securing the future of small business. By encouraging our constituents, our local councils and business organisations and others to get behind small business and small business Saturday, we can increase turnover in our local shops, increase the number of shops in our local communities and improve our communities. Small business Saturday was a huge success last year, and I hope that it will be an even larger success this year.

Question put and agreed to.