Oral Answers to Questions

Greg Smith Excerpts

Thursday 17th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

At the heart of every high street are wonderful hospitality SMEs—pubs, cafés, restaurants, bars and coffee shops—yet the 2024 Budget was a hammer blow to them. With £3.4 billion of extra costs, one in 10 restaurants faces closure this year. Indeed, Labour’s Budget has already cost hospitality 69,000 jobs. For context, in the same period the previous year, hospitality created 18,000 new jobs. Can the Minister assure the House that businesses that are hanging on by a thread will not face a hard landing this winter?

[Gareth Thomas]

The hon. Gentleman is one of those Conservative Front Benchers who have yet to tell us, if they do not like the increase in national insurance contributions, how they would pay for the extra investment in hospitals, schools and our police force. I gently say that the difficult decisions the Chancellor of the Exchequer had to take in the Budget last year were a direct result of the £22 billion black hole left to us by the Conservatives. Our small business strategy will set out further measures that we will take to have the back of British entrepreneurs.

[Greg Smith]

That answer is simply not good enough for the 63% of employees in the hospitality sector whose jobs are on the line. Yet we now read in the press that the Government appear set on forcing restaurateurs to monitor customers’ calorie consumption—another crippling blow of red tape on top of national insurance hikes, minimum wage hikes and the regulatory firestorm of the Employment Rights Bill. Jeremy Clarkson is not wrong when he says that the Chancellor is

“using a machine gun on publicans.”

Can the Minister really look hospitality SMEs on our high streets and beyond in the eye and say that this is somehow good for business?

[Gareth Thomas]

One reason the hon. Gentleman’s party lost the confidence of business is that it promised many, many times that it would reform business rates and never did. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has set out our commitment to permanently lower business rates for the hospitality sector—we have already taken steps in that regard—and she will set out our plans to do even more. That is one way in which we are backing up our commitment to SMEs in the hospitality sector and more generally.