Blair McDougall
Main Page: Blair McDougall (Labour - East Renfrewshire)Department Debates - View all Blair McDougall's debates with the Department for Business and Trade
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Blair McDougall)
I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “House” to the end of the Question and add:
“notes the Government’s strong support for small and medium-sized businesses, including those employing seasonal workers; further notes that the Government’s Employment Rights Bill will help seasonal workers by bringing the UK’s outdated employment laws into the 21st century; welcomes the policy paper entitled Backing your business: our plan for small and medium sized businesses, which sets out a comprehensive vision for productivity and success; further welcomes action to tackle late payments through the introduction of the toughest laws in the G7, helping SMEs maintain cash flow during peak periods; supports measures to cut energy bills for SMEs through investment in clean power and reducing levies; commends investment in high streets via the Pride in Place fund, boosting footfall for seasonal trade; also notes consultations to reduce burdens on hospitality businesses; and further commends targeted support through the Business Growth Service to help SMEs access skills, finance and growth opportunities.”
Around this time every year, I like to re-read “A Christmas Carol”. Last night, I read that passage from Dickens where the protagonist says:
“every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart”.
I have to say that the tone of the shadow Minister’s speech made Ebeneezer Scrooge sound positively festive!
The Government recognise that it has been a hard few years for business. Despite the appalling economic legacy the hon. Gentleman’s party left us, in this festive period we can look forward to the new year with a sense of optimism. Living standards are rising and wages are growing faster than prices. The Productive Business Index found, a few days ago, that nearly three quarters of small businesses expect revenue increases over the next three months and nearly two thirds have seen rising order volumes in the last three months. The hon. Gentleman mentions, as did other Members, Small Business Saturday. Small Business Britain reports that spending during Small Business Saturday last weekend was the highest it has been in five years.
Despite what the hon. Gentleman says, I ran a business for a decade and I know how hard the last decade was. [Interruption.] It would be immodest to agree with what he says from a sedentary position.
Sir Roger Gale (Herne Bay and Sandwich) (Con)
On Saturday last, I was in Herne Bay on Mortimer Street, where there is an absolutely fabulous toy shop called Kids Korner. It was empty. I said to them, “How are you doing?” They said, “The shop is empty, the street is empty. Nobody is spending any money.” The hospitality industry is on its knees. The hon. Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield) and I attended a roundtable recently, where every single person present said that they were having a hard time, and some were in danger of going into liquidation. I raised this example in the House earlier this week: one chain of 25 cafés, which employs young people, had a profit of £12 over the last 12 months. That is due entirely to this Government’s policies.
Blair McDougall
The right hon. Gentleman hits the nail on the head when he talks about people not spending money. That is exactly why this Labour Government are taking action to put money into people’s pockets. We must recognise that a big part of why it has been such a difficult 10 years for business were the stagnating living standards and stagnating wages under his Government. I know that hospitality, leisure and retail, which have very thin margins, have been hit especially hard by the pandemic, the cost of living crisis and changes in shopping habits, but that is why we recognised that and published, for the first time in a decade, a Government strategy for small businesses. It is why we are putting more money into people’s pockets. It is why fiscal credibility, which the Conservatives just do not seem to value at all, matters to our constituents.
Sir Ashley Fox (Bridgwater) (Con)
The Globe Inn in North Petherton is a fantastic local pub. This financial year, its business rates bill is zero. By 2029-30, it will be £5,000, thanks to this Government. That is an extra 10,000 pints it will have to sell to meet that extra cost. How is the Government’s strategy helping?
Blair McDougall
The hon. Gentleman will know about the transitional relief that we are putting in—I will come on to that in a moment—but we are putting more money into people’s pockets.
I spent five days last week speaking to small businesses. I was in Staffordshire, the north-west and Scotland meeting dozens of small businesses, and all of them said the same thing to me: what they want is footfall. As the right hon. Member for Herne Bay and Sandwich (Sir Roger Gale) said, they want people to start spending money again and to get custom.
Blair McDougall
I will make some progress first.
We are lowering costs. The hon. Member for Droitwich and Evesham mentioned the burden of regulation and red tape, but I have to ask: where was he for the last 14 years? When Labour came to power, we inherited a situation where businesses were spending 380 million staff hours on form-filling and red tape every year. We are getting into that now in a way that just did not happen before.
Anna Gelderd (South East Cornwall) (Lab)
On that point, it is important to note that businesses such as the Co-op and IKEA are supportive. The Minister mentions red tape; time and again, businesses in my constituency tell me that bureaucracy is holding them back. Will the Minister outline how we will cut red tape further?
Blair McDougall
Let us start with a few weeks ago, when we brought in changes meaning that thousands upon thousands of companies—particularly smaller companies—no longer have to engage in so much of that corporate reporting, which was completely unnecessary, saving about £250 million on the way to our wider target of cutting the regulatory burden by 25% and cutting £5 billion.
Alison Griffiths
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. I invite him to visit the hairdressers in Aldwick, in my constituency of Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, where the owner will tell him that he spends hours upon hours working to ensure that he can even stay profitable. The Government might be withdrawing some aspects of small business paperwork, but that does not change the fact that the maths do not add up. Unless the owner spends hours dotting every i, crossing every t and cutting costs where he can, his employees will not have jobs and be able then to spend more money.
Blair McDougall
The hon. Lady makes an important point, which is exactly why we are trying to drive down costs for business, not least when it comes to red tape. If there is something in particular about your constituent’s business—I do not know if it is the hairdressers that you yourself frequent—perhaps I could pop along. I would be very happy to listen—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Order. I do not wish to put on the public record which establishments I do and do not frequent, Minister.
Blair McDougall
My apologies, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Opposition Members raise the matter of business rates as well. It is exactly because we recognise the stress that retail, hospitality and leisure businesses face that the smallest of those properties will now have the lowest business rate since 1991, and those with values below £500,000 will have their lowest rate since 2011. That is a permanent tax cut worth nearly £1 billion a year, benefiting more than 750,000 retail, hospitality and leisure properties.
Alison Griffiths
I thank the Minister for giving way again. I would just like to tell him about Charlie Cockaday, who runs the Fox Inn in Felpham, who tells me that with the new business rates reform introduced by this Government, he will be paying £1,600 a month more in business rates going forward, which is the equivalent of 35p for each pint that he sells. How does that equate to putting more money in people’s pockets?
Blair McDougall
Again, I will talk about the transitional relief that we have brought in. Under the plans for valuation that we inherited, pubs were looking at rates increasing by about 45%; because of the relief we have introduced, they will face about a tenth of that. So we are acting.
I have to say, the Conservatives knew that this revaluation was coming; they knew that the temporary covid relief was coming to an end. How much did they have in their financial plans to help businesses with this revaluation? Nothing. They did not allocate a single penny for it, and now they criticise us for having brought in a £4 billion package to help businesses with it. Worse than that, they oppose the higher business rates that we have brought in for the warehouses of online giants, which is exactly what is paying for the structural change allowing for permanently lower business rates on retail and hospitality.
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
Governments have to make choices—we all understand that—but the choice that this Government made was not to cut spending on welfare, which has limited their choices elsewhere. There is a real choice. If the Conservatives had been in power, we would not have made those choices over the summer, and the hospitality sector would have been in a very different place in the Budget.
Blair McDougall
That is exactly my point—the Conservatives were not going to make those choices. Those choices were not in their financial plans, but they are in ours.
Blair McDougall
I will give way one more time, but only because I have deep affection for the right hon. Gentleman.
Tom Tugendhat
The Minister is a charming and, no doubt, soon to be very well-haircutted gentleman. The point that my right hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) was making—I am afraid this reinforces it—is that such a choice was clearly not in the Government’s plans, either. Otherwise, they would not have brought forward the welfare changes they planned in July, but have since been bounced out of by their own Back Benchers. It clearly was not their plan either, and that is why we are in this position.
Blair McDougall
But it is in our plan. We have just passed the Budget, which introduces the relief on business rates.
Let me return to the theme of “A Christmas Carol” and the visit of the ghost of Christmas past. Let us travel back to when the hon. Member for Droitwich and Evesham gushed about Liz Truss’s mini-Budget, with her unfunded tax giveaway, which he said represented “a new era” and would
“help everybody with the cost-of-living pressures”.
Well, unlike Ebenezer Scrooge, the hon. Gentleman has not repented; he has not seen the error of his ways and the impact of unfunded commitments. Instead, he is at it again, calling for tax cuts without any idea whatsoever of how to pay for them.
Chris Vince
Members on the Conservative Benches talk about political choices—they made a political choice to bring in austerity, which meant a lack of funding for the NHS. My constituency of Harlow is full of sole traders who tell me that what really affects their ability to earn money, in order to have money in their pockets to spend in the pub or at other establishments, is the fact they have to wait for years on end to get a doctor’s appointment or an operation. Does he agree that the Chancellor has made the right choice to invest in our NHS so that we can get waiting times down and my workers can get back to work?
Blair McDougall
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is one of the important ways we will get the welfare bill down as well as getting more money into people’s pockets, and ultimately more money into tills. Instead of fantastical unfunded tax cuts, we are giving real help to high streets across the country. Millions of British people will benefit from the £5 billion Pride in Place programme, which puts local people in 339 neighbourhoods in the driving seat of renewing their own areas.
Ms Billington
I am grateful to the Government for the fact that Ramsgate in particular is benefiting from the Pride in Place fund. More widely, on the matter of seasonal work, which is vital for coastal communities such as mine, can the Minister confirm that seasonal and hospitality workers will benefit from many of the measures in the Budget that will tackle the cost of living and raise their wages, such as increases to the minimum wage, cuts to energy bills and the freezing of bus and train fares?
Blair McDougall
Absolutely. Members on the Government Benches recognise the link between the standard of living and business sustainability. My hon. Friend mentioned that her area will benefit from Pride in Place—the hon. Member for Droitwich and Evesham has Smethwick, Darlaston, Bilston, Dudley and Bedworth in his part of the world, all of which are receiving funding through Pride in Place.
We are also ensuring that we protect the character and the safety of high streets, because again, what we hear from small businesses again and again is that they need footfall. We need to make high streets attractive places to go, so we are clamping down on illegal high street activity in premises such as mini-marts, barbershops, vape shops and nail bars. At the Budget, we announced an additional £15 million a year, alongside wider measures to tackle bogus retailers.
Dr Murrison
Has the Minister compared and contrasted Pride in Place with the future high streets fund, which was a proven mechanism for uplifting the state of many of our high streets, including Trowbridge in my constituency? He is trotting out a load of things that he thinks will benefit retail and hospitality. The whole point of retail and hospitality businesses is that they must be welcoming places that are open to all, so what does he make of the dozens of pubs and restaurants up and down the country that are now feeling forced to put up signs in their windows that say “No Labour MPs”?
Blair McDougall
I have yet to see any pub with any such sign. My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) spoke about how disastrous the implementation of the future high streets fund was on the ground, and we are trying to learn lessons from that.
The hon. Member for Droitwich and Evesham also criticised the Employment Rights Bill. I compared him to Scrooge earlier, but I am sorry to say that on this subject he was even less charitable than Dickens’s great character. Scrooge famously wanted his workers to have regular hours over Christmas—indeed, he insisted on it—but the hon. Gentleman does not seem to want that. Even Scrooge by the end of the story gave Bob Cratchit a pay rise so that his family could enjoy Christmas, but the hon. Gentleman is arguing against that.
Gareth Snell
I remember sitting on the Opposition Benches when the Conservatives were in government. They were trumpeting their increase in the minimum wage and saying that the creation of the living wage was a demonstration of their commitment to helping low-paid people in this country. Does the Minister worry that, if we extrapolate the point that the hon. Member for Droitwich and Evesham has been making to its natural conclusion, the Conservatives are actually advocating a cut in the minimum wage as a way to help businesses, which would be detrimental to the thousands of people in Stoke-on-Trent who rely on that money to pay their bills?
Blair McDougall
I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. Again, the Conservatives do not understand the link between what is in people’s pockets and what goes into the tills. I spent a fantastic day with my hon. Friend and his local businesses last week, and I was impressed by how those at the businesses were all on first-name terms with him.
Jayne Kirkham (Truro and Falmouth) (Lab/Co-op)
Does the Minister agree that part of the problem was caused by the Conservatives, who did not welcome the introduction of the minimum wage in 1998, saying that it would destroy businesses, and later when in government split the minimum wage so that people over 25 got more than people under 25, which is causing the inequality that we are having to deal with now?
Blair McDougall
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I recall working in this place as a younger man when we had all-night sittings, as the Conservatives united with those in the other place to try to stop our efforts to make work pay for people—and here we are again, a quarter of a century later.
Dame Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)
That is exactly the issue: the Minister was in this place back when the Government were coming up with their plans and policies; meanwhile, I was starting and running a business and employing people. That is the difference. A minimum wage cannot be given to someone who does not have a wage at all because they do not have a job. His party is putting people out of work. There are now 31% more young people not in employment in my constituency than there were this time last year. That is a disgrace, isn’t it?
Blair McDougall
If the hon. Member had been here at the start of the debate, she would have heard me talking about how I ran a business as well. She mentions job creation. The first year of this Government has seen 138,000 more jobs.
Blair McDougall
No, I have given way several times. I will make progress.
The Government are fully supportive of the variety of working arrangements that people, including young people, might choose depending on their circumstances, but the key word there is “choose”. Until now, that flexibility has been entirely one-sided; it has been something that employers have used to their benefit. It is time to let workers have their rights.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central asked about whether Conservative Members understand what it is like to be in insecure work, particularly at this time of year. This is the most expensive—
Blair McDougall
No, I am coming to a close.
This is the most expensive time of year, and December is the most expensive month. Labour is proud to be acting to ensure that families can plan for the expense of Christmas and look forward to Christmas without worrying and having anxiety about whether they can make it to the end of the month. The criticisms and lack of understanding from the Conservatives about how important the cost of living and money in people’s pockets is to the success of businesses is, quite frankly, humbug.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.