Department for Business and Trade

Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts

Wednesday 4th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

I will make some brief remarks. I note that the Department’s estimates memorandum made specific reference to spending supporting the objectives to make the UK the best place in the world to do business, the best place to do business from, and to deliver great services to businesses. I will talk about a roundtable I held for hospitality businesses in my constituency last week. The organisations that attended varied hugely in size, turnover and business model—North East Fife is a place that generally people want to visit, and it caters for a number of visitors accordingly—but none of them thought that the Department for Business and Trade was making this the best place in the world to be operating.

Part of the reason for the debate was because the Department has increased its budgets for the British Business Bank and the growth guarantee scheme, which the Chair of the Business and Trade Committee mentioned. There are other sectors in North East Fife—we have seen losses in manufacturing, largely due to our departure from the EU, and we have the University of St Andrews doing groundbreaking work and research—but we are largely a rural economy, with farmers across the constituency.

Turning to hospitality, one of the issues raised at my business roundtable was the difficulty in accessing finance. Given that has already been raised by the Chair of the Committee, I hope that the Minister will address that point in particular. As has been already touched on, the feeling is that hospitality is being hammered from every direction at the moment—the question asked was: how much more can businesses take?

Across the board, businesses understood the reasons behind the changes to national insurance contributions, and they were supportive of the national living wage. Part of that is because most leaders in hospitality have worked their way up within the sector, and they know that the hard work of the service industry deserves proper pay. But as business owners they are also acutely aware that their wage bills are going up unsustainably.

A significant amount of hospitality businesses’ costs relate to staffing—some of them quoted 30% to 40%, or even higher. With the lower threshold for contributions dropping to £5,000, employees now pay national insurance on more of their employees’ earnings, which means that many part-time roles have been impacted and part-time recruitment is no longer happening. More full-time roles are being recruited, which stops young people, for example, from finding that first rung on the hospitality ladder.

Business rates are also going up. As a Scottish MP, I appreciate that that problem lies squarely at the feet of the SNP Government in Scotland, who could pause this year’s re-evaluations but are refusing to do so. I am grateful to my colleagues in the Scottish Parliament, who have secured hospitality reliefs in our budget negotiations with them. Food inflation—especially with the impact of tariffs—is a real concern, and the only real lever to control soaring costs is to cut back on training, hours and staff: those things that the Chair of the Business and Trade Committee said are so critical to delivering some of the change that the Government want to see.

The biggest ask that came from hospitality was to cut VAT from 20% to 15%, which is a move that the Liberal Democrats have been calling for for some time. I know that that is not in the gift of the Minister, but I urge him to make representations to the Treasury if we want this to be the best place in the world to do business. It is also a measure that would support hospitality across the UK, and I say that as a Scottish MP.

Hospitality is important for so many reasons. Last September, there were 2.6 million jobs in the hospitality industry and it is estimated to be worth £70 billion to our economy. It is also part of our community. That came across very strongly in the roundtable. On the day that my son was born, our local pub was across the road from our house and I went there to wet his head, because why should I miss out on all the fun? Since then, it is the place he has worked in and the place where he had his 18th birthday. We need to support these hospitality industries.