Economy and Jobs

Debate between Richard Holden and Marcus Fysh

Monday 20th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Marcus Fysh (Yeovil) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Caroline Ansell). It is wonderful to see her back in this place, and to follow so many great colleagues, including new Members who have given us amazing demonstrations of their pride in and passion for their areas. It is interesting to hear some of the passion from new Opposition Members as well. I think the one thing that unites everybody who comes to this House, across both sides of the Chamber, is the genuine desire to see their areas improve. We might have different ways of trying to get from A to B, but I think most of us in this place want a better life for the people who live in our areas.

On election day, I was flabbergasted and moved by just how many people in one of my toughest areas—one of the more deprived parts of south-west England—were telling me that they would vote Conservative. They backed us in the election, and we owe it to them to back ourselves to make that difference for people. We now have a huge opportunity and a mandate for radical change. I think that a lot of people wanted to see that change in their lives when we had the Brexit vote as well, and we have a duty to make that a reality for them.

I was really proud of the people of Yeovil for choosing an optimistic and forward-looking approach, rather than the backward-looking way of socialism. Capitalism is the way forward that has been proven, over many years and in many different parts of the world, to be the best deliverer of better conditions for people. It is wonderful to see that optimism is back, because capitalism depends on optimism. It depends on people believing in each other’s ability to fulfil their part of a bargain, whether that is doing a deal, knowing they can get help if they need to climb the famous Conservative ladder, or retiring knowing that their children will have the same opportunities that they had—or even better. We owe it to people to really drill down into what can improve their lives.

Competitiveness is very important in the current global environment. We are in a challenging world. We have interest rates at next to zero, or below zero in many cases. That zero-bound, as it is known, presents a lot of challenges for policy makers to make sure that investment occurs in a way that is productive, because we do not want to be using such low interest rates to be investing in unproductive things. That is something we really need to watch out for.

The UK economy is doing really well, and we should celebrate that. We heard earlier about the wonderful employment performance. We can always do better; we should not rest on our laurels at all. We should look at some of the problems that the European economy is having at the moment, including the persistent problems in the banking system. Despite the low interest rates and the quantitative easing that has been used, à l’outrance, to buy up corporate bonds, the situation is still very fragile. We should not underestimate how resilient we need to make our own economy to be able to resist the vicissitudes of economic fortune that may or may not occur. It is brilliant, in that context, that we have managed to bring Labour’s deficit down so that we are not adding to the national debt in the way that we were when we took over back in 2010.

At a granular level in our constituencies, there are big areas where we need to perform better and to improve things. I am very keen on what is in the Queen’s Speech and was in our manifesto about reform of business rates. That is particularly important because our high streets are struggling. Going back to Yeovil, we heard only earlier today that the national department store chain Beales is now in administration. It is has a big facility in Yeovil that I would like to persist there, even if it looks difficult at the moment. The company has cited business rates as one of the big factors. We need to make sure that our towns fund is well funded and gets into all areas of the country, not just the north, because many in the south-west feel left behind too. We depend on that and the future high streets fund for investment in our cattle market site and at Glovers Walk. Without help with the basic infrastructure and reconstruction of those sites, which is quite difficult, it is hard to regenerate our main town.

[Mr Holden]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the increase in the business rates discount is an important measure that the Government are taking to help small businesses not only in his constituency but across the country?

[Mr Fysh]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point and he is absolutely right. Increasing that to 33% really is a big deal for smaller businesses. We need to reform the whole system and try to use that to devolve the ability to invest locally raised taxes in our local economies and have them compete with each other. That can create the dynamism in our economy to really grow and create jobs into the future.

We need to invest in roads in the south-west. We need to follow through on the dualling of the A303. We should be starting that this year on the Sparkford to Ilchester section, but we need to make sure that the Stonehenge tunnel is funded, because the value for money of the whole project depends on that.