Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what representations he has received from the business community on reducing small business rates in line with those rates in Scotland.

Treasury Ministers receive representations from many different stakeholders on a range of issues, including business rates.

The government has made recent reforms to reduce the burden of business rates, notably for small businesses. Budget 2016 announced cuts worth approximately £9bn by the end of the parliament which took 600,000 of the smallest businesses out of rates, and Autumn Budget 2017 announced a further £2.3bn of reductions including bringing forward the planned switch in the indexation of rates from RPI to CPI to 2018.