Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Peter Grant and Huw Merriman

Thursday 26th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Huw Merriman)]

I am very happy to meet my hon. Friend. Chalkwell, Ockendon and Southend East remain within the Access for All programme. We have delivered 230 stations and we will deliver those three as well. We had an issue with the contractor putting in a cost estimate that was about double what I would expect; that is why we have had to look anew, but I will very happily meet my hon. Friend to discuss this further, and she has that commitment. We will deliver it.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

T9. Can the Minister confirm that although HS2—or maybe HS1- and-a-quarter—is going no further than Birmingham, the HS2 trains will continue to run on the west coast main line? Is he aware of repeated reports that because the new trains are not designed for existing track, the high- speed trains to Glasgow will go slower than the existing trains on that line? Can the Minister categorically assure the House that that is not the case, and tell us how much time will be cut from the train journey from Glasgow to Birmingham?

[Huw Merriman]

It comes down to choices. We could have chosen to continue with HS2, which would not have delivered the value we need, with time overrunning, or we could have done as the Scottish National party did when it built two ferries at a shipyard that had been nationalised, going four times over budget and running seven years late. Alternatively, we could have done as it did on the tram—described by the Edinburgh tram inquiry as a “litany of avoidable failures”. When there are choices to be made, the SNP ploughs on regardless.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Peter Grant and Huw Merriman

Thursday 24th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Huw Merriman]

I will certainly come by train to meet my hon. Friend, who is a true champion for transport in Ynys Môn and the wider north Wales region. She has secured a Backbench Business debate on the west coast main line in the Chamber on 15 December, and that demonstrates what a champion she is. I expect to have the business case for the project that she mentions on my desk in the new year, when I can talk to her further about it.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

14. What assessment he has made of his Department’s spending priorities in the context of the autumn statement 2022.

Supporting Small Business

Debate between Peter Grant and Huw Merriman

Tuesday 19th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Peter Grant]

If the hon. Member does not understand what the Federation of Small Businesses thinks about his Government tearing up their manifesto promise and increasing the burden of national insurance, if he does not understand what small businesses are saying about the impact that Brexit has had on them, if he does not understand that the energy crisis that the United Kingdom still faces, with massively increasing energy costs that then increase costs for every single business on these islands, and if Conservative Members do not understand that all those things are purely the result of their party’s policies, each and every one of which is devastating for the wellbeing of small business, then we have to wonder why on earth they are still in Government.

[Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

Perhaps we could mention one example of this Government helping small business: the requirement for outsourcing agencies, such as National Highways and Network Rail, to put a third of all their contracts into the hands of small businesses. Indeed, Network Rail is up to that third already. Is that not a tangible example of this Government doing something to support small businesses?

[Peter Grant]

Well, it was not quite the way that things were done with all the personal protective equipment contracts and other covid contracts. Of course, there is a better way to do it than that. Rather than telling the health service that a fraction of all its privatised contracts have to go to small businesses, why not say to the health service, “Don’t privatise it. Do it yourself.”? The public would get a better, cheaper and more efficient service, which is exactly what we are seeing with the NHS in Scotland since the SNP banned the privatisation of our services all together.

If the Conservatives want to see an example of how to support small businesses, they do not need to look beyond these islands. They need to look beyond this Chamber, beyond this city and beyond this country to some of the other countries that are supposed to be equal partners in this Union. If they do, they will see examples of Governments—I commend also some of the Welsh Government initiatives mentioned earlier—who do not just talk the talk on supporting small business, but who walk the walk as well. That might be something to do with the fact that those Governments are not run by parties whose coffers are swollen to obscene degrees by people who have made their money running big businesses—very often, big businesses that ran small businesses into the ground.

The linkage between the impact of non-domestic rates and other taxes and Government policies on small businesses is clearly complex, so it is not possible to say that simply changing the non-domestic rates scheme on its own will fix the problem. I, for one, do not like the idea of using an imaginary property valuation as a significant feature in deciding somebody’s tax bill, whether it is an individual’s council tax or a business’s non-domestic rates burden. The tax base is far too narrow on far too many businesses. We are taxing things that might have been the right things to tax 500 years ago, but which are not the right things to tax now.

Most importantly, as was mentioned by the shadow Chancellor, the hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves), we have to move to a situation where the tax is due and is paid where the profits are made. We cannot have companies that make substantial profits on the hard work, diligence and expertise of people in the United Kingdom, but where all the profits are magicked away to some offshore tax haven so that no tax is ever paid. The Government have it in their hands to change that. They need to move a lot quicker to do that. Doing so would not only help to plug the gap in the public finances, but would give small businesses a chance to compete on fair and equal terms with the bigger competitors. I can say, for a lot of the small businesses in my constituency, let them compete on equal terms with the big boys; they will take them on and, as often as not, they will beat them, and they will make sure that profits from that success are reinvested in their local communities.

As with so many other things that we debate in this Chamber, I have indicated the successes that the Government of Scotland have had with the powers they have. Others have referred to some of the successful initiatives that the Government of Wales have introduced with the limited powers that they have. With increased powers for those devolved Parliaments will come increased success and increased wellbeing for the citizens of those nations. The only way that small businesses in Scotland will have a long-term, secure and profitable future is when the decisions that affect them are taken by a Government who are accountable to the people of Scotland and to no one else.