Supporting Small Business — House of Commons, 2021-10-19
Topic: Macroeconomics
Paul Stuart Scully (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend raises a really important point. We also heard about business rates being scrapped and replaced with a property tax—on a property that would presumably be owned by a business, and I guess we could use our rating system to work it out. Essentially, that is just semantics, not a systematic and effective way of replacing business rates. That is why the fundamental review is so important My hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (David Johnston) made a comparison to Chris Hemsworth and talked about the Great British Mead Company, which reminds me of the importance of the hospitality sector as part of the ecosystem of our local and night-time economy and indeed the high street. My hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger) talked about opportunity and connectivity, which are at the heart of what we are doing to allow high streets to bounce back further All I have heard is negativity from the Opposition with no answer, but we are making sure that the 352 billion reasons to allow the economy to bounce back are as effective as possible. Our plan is working. Our unemployment rate is at less than 5% and falling, which is lower than France, America, Canada, Italy and Spain. We have one of the fastest recoveries of any major economy in the world, and GDP is growing. That shows that the Government’s approach is a success and that we have fostered the right environment for the economy to grow The Labour party will never admit this, but the UK is a great place to do business. We have the lowest corporate tax rates in the G20, and the kind of lean regulation that puts us in the global top ten for ease of doing business. Next year, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy will publish an enterprise strategy which will explain how we want to revive Britain’s spirit of enterprise and help more people to start and scale up a business. It is easy to see why the UK is consistently home to one of the largest and most resilient economies in the world. All this underlies the reason why it has long been a great place to do business, and why we are seeing so much excitement in the rest of the world about investing in the UK. People are queuing up to spend at the global investment summit that is being held today. In the last 10 months, we have already seen a flurry of spending in the UK: there is to be a gigafactory in Sunderland, Ford and Stellantis are churning out electric vehicles in the north-west, and GE Renewable Energy and others are creating an offshore wind hub in Teesside. Those projects constitute a huge vote of confidence in the UK as a place to do business as we recover from the pandemic We have been there for small businesses since the start of the pandemic, we are there for them now, and we will be there for them for as long as they need us. I want to ensure that as we move forward into this area of recovery, we build resilience into our economy as well. We will do that through the fundamental review of business rates and through our enterprise strategy, and by making sure that we stand behind our businesses Question put: