People who start or run their own small businesses are heroes. Every day, they take the risks, they work the extra hours, they manage the anxieties, and they go the extra mile to create employment and wealth in constituencies across the country. They are people like Amy Taylor and Zak Resinato. Amy Taylor started her beauty business very early in her teenage years and is now at the stage of putting it on a solid and sound foundation for future growth. Zak Resinato is a person I see every week who is not only inspiring in running his own business but inspiring others who work with him to have the vision that they too can start their own business. Beth and Mahmood, through their dedication and hard work, have created a café that is working in a location where it never worked before—an environment that local people want to spend time in. Maria has battled a council that does not understand the role of business rates in suppressing entrepreneurship. Year after year, she carries on in business because that is the core of her passion.
We live in the age of the entrepreneurs, and those people in my constituency are some of the leaders in that age. They look to this Bill and this Government for inspiration. There is indeed much in the Bill that can inspire them, but, alas, too much in the way of intervention and regulation. It is as if the Secretary of State sees himself as a real-world version of Saruman, the character who came down to Middle-earth with the best of intentions but unfortunately took the power to himself and believed that he alone was benign enough and so all-seeing that he could create a wonderful environment in which all would be good. Alas, the Secretary of State has not read his Hayek. He does not understand that it is a far better solution for our country’s economy to leave these decisions and powers in the hands of the entrepreneurs—the people who make these decisions and take these risks every day. The shadow Secretary of State noted that the Secretary of State had Conservative minders. It is important that he has Conservative minders, and I am delighted that the Minister for Business and Enterprise will be a strong, solid Conservative voice in getting this Bill through Parliament.
Part 4 is where some aspects of intervention and regulation fall down. It was never the intention that family-owned breweries would be impacted by the regulations, yet the Bill has measures that will do so. That should not happen in a Bill that is supposed to support small businesses. It also provides for an adjudicator whose role is flawed, and for a publican code that, as many hon. Members have already said, lacks some of the necessary details to be able to support small businesses. The Government’s own impact assessment states that there are additional costs on a brewing and pub industry that is already reeling from the cost competition provided by supermarkets and other places where people can buy alcoholic beverages. Those things should be looked at by the Minister and given a Conservative slant, to make sure that we support not only our publicans who want a fair deal, but our family brewers who also deserve a fair deal.
Let us hope that, through this Bill, people such as Zak, Amy, Beth, Mahmood and Maria can say that the Conservative Government stand, in the age of the entrepreneurs, on the side of our small business leaders.
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