Business Rates

Debate between Dan Tomlinson and Caroline Nokes

Tuesday 27th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Dan Tomlinson)]

This Government want the best for Britain’s high streets. We know how central they are to the strength and vibrancy of our villages, towns and cities. We know how hard small business owners work, and we know how badly they were let down by the previous Government; shops were shuttered, council funding was cut, and business rates were left totally unreformed. We will not let decline continue, and we are already taking steps to arrest it.

We are protecting high street businesses from upward-only rent review clauses, and we are introducing a strong new community right to buy to help communities safeguard valued community assets, such as pubs and shops on their high streets. We are pushing ahead with high street rental auctions, which are helping to bring long-term empty shops back into use. Where premises have been vacant for too long, councils can auction the right to rent them; they can offer one to five-year leases to new businesses and community groups, helping to create more vibrant high streets. We also launched the winter of action to combat retail crime, a nationwide crackdown on crime and antisocial behaviour to protect shoppers and retail workers.

As well as that, we are investing in local communities through the £5 billion Pride in Place programme announced last September, and we are investing to support growth, including through the new local growth fund. Around one in three businesses continue to benefit from small business rates relief and do not pay any business rates at all, and 85,000 benefit from reduced business rates as this relief tapers. At the Budget, we extended the small business rates relief second property grace period for another two years, which is a really important change; it means that businesses expanding into a second property will retain the support as they grow.

We know that there is more to do. Before I turn to today’s announcements, I want to run through the three main components of the changes to business rates that are taking place in April for all businesses, and to explain the steps that the Government took at the Budget last year on business rates. The first change is the underlying, significant reforms to the system that the Chancellor set out as part of our commitment to transform business rates in England over this Parliament. We have implemented permanently lower multipliers for eligible retail, hospitality and leisure properties; the multiplier will fall by around 12p or 25% on 1 April. Some of this is a result of the overall reduction in multipliers between revaluation periods, but the further 5p reduction announced by the Chancellor is, on its own, worth nearly £1 billion for the 750,000 retail, hospitality and leisure businesses that are the lifeblood of our high streets.

We are paying for this support for the high street through higher rates on the top 1% most expensive properties. That includes many large distribution warehouses, such as those used by online retail giants. Let us be crystal clear: before our reforms, a mid-sized high street business faced the same multiplier or tax rate as a warehouse used by an online giant—that was the system we were left with. Now, the mid-sized high street business will pay around 38p in the pound, and the large warehouse will pay around 51p in the pound. That is 33% more. This is a sizeable reform, and it is here for good.

The second component of business rates announced at the Budget was the revaluation. All non-domestic properties are revalued independently every three years for business rates purposes. New valuations will come into effect in April. I thank the independent valuers in the Valuation Office Agency who carry out the work. The Government did not take the easy approach of kicking the post-covid revaluation into the long grass. Instead, we introduced a significant transitional support package, because we knew that some sectors were seeing large increases in their rateable values after the pandemic. We are capping bill increases in each of the next three years for those with the largest rises, and we are spending a total of £4.3 billion on that and other interventions.

The Government recognise that the rateable value of hotels has increased significantly since the pandemic, so our caps on increases are particularly important for them, but it is right that we look at this further. We will therefore review the way that hotels are valued, to ensure that it accurately reflects the market for this sector.

The third important context is the tapering away of the temporary pandemic relief for high street businesses. The previous Government went into the election with plans to withdraw that relief overnight in 2025. That would have been a harsh and sharp removal of support, pushing up bills for independent high street businesses overnight by 300%. That is reckless and irresponsible. Instead, we have taken a different approach. We extended the retail, hospitality and leisure relief this year—it is set at 40%—and we are unwinding it over the coming years. The jumping-off point for any business currently receiving a 40% discount is their current bill, not their bill without relief.

The Budget decisions led to the following outcomes. First, for over half of ratepayers, bills will be flat or will fall next year. Secondly, of the properties whose bills will increase from 1 April, most will see their increases capped at 15% or less, or at £800 for the smallest. Thirdly, bills will adjust to new valuations, but because of our caps, this will happen gradually, and high street businesses will benefit from permanently reduced multipliers for the long term. That is a fair and reasonable approach. As set out at the Budget, in total we are spending over £4 billion in the next three years to limit the scale of bill increases for those who are either losing reliefs or seeing their rateable values increase.

In the coming financial year, because of our interventions, the business rates system will raise the same amount of revenue as it was forecast to raise in spring 2025, before the Budget—not billions and billions more, as Opposition Members seek to claim. The forecast is more or less the same. That is the shape of the policy that we set out in the Budget. I hope you will forgive me, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I wanted to set that out in full, because business rates are rather complicated.

This Government want to go further to support pubs. Pubs are the cornerstone of so many communities, and they are essential to the social and cultural life of so many places across the country. I have heard clearly from Government Members just how important pubs are. I thank colleagues who have engaged constructively and privately with me on this issue in recent weeks. Whether they represent constituencies in coastal or rural communities, towns or cities, their representations have been invaluable. Their constituents should know that most of the politics that they see in the papers is not what matters; it is the conversations and the advocacy of MPs in the corridors of this place that can make the difference. In particular, my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Tom Hayes) has been a relentless advocate for businesses in his constituency, as have my hon. Friends the Members for Isle of Wight West (Mr Quigley), and for Redditch (Chris Bloore). I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols) for her engagement on this issue, in her role as chair of the all-party group on pubs.

For too long, under the Conservatives, pubs have not had the support they needed. Opposition Members claim to care about pubs, but where were they when the number of pubs fell by 7,000 between 2010 and 2024? They were in government, and they let the number of pubs in our communities fall by a fifth. The Conservatives also allowed the revaluation to go ahead with a business rates methodology for pubs that no longer has the support of the sector. Before the Budget, every pub sector body was broadly signed up to the methodology used for valuing pubs, and lent its support to the principles set out in the Valuation Office Agency’s guide. Since the Budget, the same sector bodies have withdrawn their support. The Government acknowledge their concerns and will therefore carry out a review of the pub valuation methodology. The review will report in time to be implemented at the next revaluation.

While that review is ongoing, and given the challenges that pubs faced over the long term under the previous Government, we are stepping in to provide support for pubs in the next three years. Today, I confirm that, from April, every pub in England will get 15% off its new business rates bill, on top of the support announced in the Budget. Pubs’ bills will then be frozen in real terms for a further two years. That support is worth £1,650 to the average pub next year. It will mean that around three quarters of pubs will see their bills either fall or stay the same next year. This decision—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order. I say very gently to the Minister that it was always open to him to ask for extra time, but we cannot find any record of him having done so. He has already got to 10 minutes, and he seems to have three more pages, so I will allow the Opposition spokespersons more time as well. This is an important statement, and I think that the hon. Member wants to finish, but it is very unfair to exceed the time by what I reckon will be 50%.

[Sir Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)]

Last orders.

Clause 1

Debate between Dan Tomlinson and Caroline Nokes

Monday 12th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Dan Tomlinson]

If I may, I will make a little more progress.

Those with small amounts of income from assets will continue to be protected by tax-free allowances, and income from savings and investments held in individual savings accounts will continue to be tax-free. The vast majority of UK taxpayers are unaffected by these changes as they do not have taxable property, dividend or savings income. Changes to savings and dividend income will apply UK-wide, and the Government have engaged closely with the devolved Governments of Scotland and Wales to provide them with the ability to set property income rates in line with the current income tax powers in their fiscal frameworks.

Clause 4 will increase the tax rates applicable to dividend income by 2 percentage points for the 2026-27 tax year. Clause 5 will increase the tax rates applicable to savings income by the same amount. Clauses 6 and 7 will create separate tax rates for property income, which will apply from the 2027-28 tax year. The property basic, higher and additional rates will be set at 22%, 42% and 47%, respectively, for the 2027-28 tax year. Clause 6 will also make changes to the income tax calculation so that general reliefs and allowances will be applied to property income, savings and dividend income only after they have been applied to other sources of income.

Clause 8 will make provision for the Scottish Parliament and the Senedd to set devolved property income tax rates. This power will be commenced by the Treasury if the Scottish and Welsh Governments agree—individually, of course—to take the power, which is the typical process to protect the powers and responsibilities of devolved Governments.

These changes will still ensure that those with the broadest shoulders contribute more. In 2029-30, around two thirds of the revenue from the increases to the dividend, property and savings tax rates is expected to come from the top 20% of households. Taken together, these measures are projected to yield £2.2 billion in additional tax revenue by 2029-30.

This Finance Bill is about delivering on choices—choices to protect ordinary workers; choices to cut their energy bills, freeze train fares and prescription charges; and choices to focus on reducing inflation to push down mortgage costs. It delivers the Government’s commitment to this country to build a stronger and fairer economy where living standards rise and child poverty falls, and to ensure that public services are improved, with every measure in the Bill geared towards those high-level goals. The choice at the Budget was austerity and decline or investment and renewal, and this Labour Government back investment and renewal.

[The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Caroline Nokes)]

I call the shadow Minister.