Business Rates

I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman is talking to me as though I am already the Minister looking after this brief. We should look at those aspects to see what we can do to help business. He seems already to have gone into Opposition MP mode. There is no doubt that for smaller, more marginal companies business rates are one of the largest parts of their cost base, and they are levied whether or not those companies are making profits. We know that more than other businesses, small businesses are prone to be hit proportionally hardest by Government decisions on business rates. One would have thought that that mattered to Ministers, but it did not. Given that they were deciding to put through massive business rate hikes in the teeth of a recession, one would have thought that Ministers might take the time to understand the impact of business rates on more marginal businesses, but they did not. They made no effort to understand how their decision to raise business rates would hurt communities, hurt businesses and cost jobs. On the withdrawal of transitional relief, Ministers have known of the pressure of rates on many thousands of businesses since 2004. As I said earlier, in their own consultation paper they even identified the problem. The paper states that at the time, Ministers said that they had been warned that:""There are some groups representing rate payers who expect significant rises in their rate bills and who are pressing for a five-year scheme"." Ministers ignored those concerns. Businesses are therefore concerned about business rates rising at the end of transitional relief. Those concerns were raised even before the recession, but even when the situation has got worse and we are in a recession, it does not seem to occur to Ministers to reassess their approach. Who is penalised for the Government's incompetence? Small businesses, which are worst hit because of their size. That often means that they are far more vulnerable to a recession and, as I said, to Ministers raising business rates. Many of those small businesses are local shops, and often parades of shops, which provide employment and support communities. They include the newsagent, the laundrette and the corner shop. They are all fighting to stay in business and they are put under more pressure by Government decisions to hike up business rates. Surely the harshest aspect of the withdrawal of transitional relief was its impact on businesses that had played their role in regenerating their communities. They were doing exactly what the Government asked of them. They took risks and set up their businesses in areas that desperately needed better facilities and shops.