First, I direct the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I do so specifically, not least because I feel passionately about small and medium-sized enterprises. I worked in them and ran them before I came to Parliament, and now I am again working with family businesses. A constituency such as Great Yarmouth is absolutely reliant on those SMEs—in fact, it is not so well known that our whole economy is. I will explain that in a moment.
My father ran a business, and I have always had a strong relationship with Great Yarmouth because his business—an SME that employed people—had a factory there. Because of how SMEs integrate into the community, even today, some 30 or 40 years since my father left that business, people who worked for him are still running a part of that business in Great Yarmouth. They are employing people who will go on eventually to run that business, and maybe they will set up their own businesses to form part of the Great Yarmouth business community.
Some 37,000 people in my constituency—roughly half of my voting constituency—work in SMEs. There are some 3,000 SMEs in Great Yarmouth. That sounds like a lot, but it is no surprise because across the country something like 99% of businesses qualify as SMEs. More than 50% of our working population work for SMEs. That is a huge number, and that is important, because these businesses drive our economy.
I have a strong interest in the housing industry. I was the Housing Minister, and I remember working with great house builders and household names, and some of the great multinational companies that we see started as sole traders and grew to be the big names that we know today. In sectors across our economy, there are big-name brands and companies employing people globally who started as family businesses. Some of them still are family businesses.
We need today’s S’s to become the M’s of tomorrow and then to become the big companies that grow our economy. We get very focused on the big names, and they play a hugely important part, but for constituencies such as Great Yarmouth—particularly coastal communities where the tourism and hospitality industry plays such a key role—SMEs are at their heart.
SMEs play a part for the big companies as well. The oil and gas and renewable energy industry has a huge presence in Great Yarmouth, particularly in servicing. Companies such as Seajacks, which work around the world, are from and based in Great Yarmouth. They are there because an entrepreneur from the oil and gas industry had an idea, took the risk and developed it in Great Yarmouth. Now, he is employing people from across Great Yarmouth. When clients come to companies like Seajacks and others in the energy industry, they often take their clients, visitors and customers for lunch in places like the Imperial Hotel in Great Yarmouth, and restaurants like the Waterside, or Planet Spice in Ormesby. Those businesses are integral to big and medium-sized businesses. It is a symbiotic relationship. Our economies work because of all of those layers.
Small businesses are generally family-owned businesses. If not, they are at the very least locally owned or locally run. That means they have a very keen interest in the community, which they show by sponsoring local sports teams or cub scouts, or just by being involved in the community and knowing their staff who are a part of the community. The businesses are an important part of it. We have spoken in this Chamber a lot, and in my roles in government I have spoken a lot, about the pub industry and why pubs are so important to our communities. They are SMEs and a hugely important part of the community. Like many other businesses, if they have a regular customer who has not been in the pub that day, they may be the first in the community to realise there is a problem.
An SME owner or manager will generally know all their staff. In my business, before I came into Parliament, I knew all our staff by name. That does not happen in a conglomerate, but it happens in small and medium-sized businesses because their owners and managers are a part of that business and community. They also respect the local community in a different way—not to say that big companies do not respect their communities—because they are so reliant on it for their customers and their staff. They are much more integral to the local community, and much more focused on how they can work for it and support it. That matters, because that is what binds our communities together. It also ensures we can deliver social mobility. People can move and work in businesses in different sectors across the country, knowing that wherever they need to move to and wherever they want to work, there is a community they can be a part of; not just a housing estate or a business but a community, and the business will be a key part of that.
SMEs, particularly in hospitality which is so vital to constituencies like Great Yarmouth, have had a really tough time. As we came through the covid pandemic, they arguably had some of the toughest situations to deal with. In many ways, it was one of the fastest industries to recover, because we all wanted to get out and about and do things while we had the opportunity to do so, but those businesses still need help. VAT has been an issue for them since it has come back up, particularly compared to some of our competitors around the world. They also have to deal with business rates. SMEs find business rates to be a challenge, as they have to deal with high street values and prices, while competing with conglomerates that have out-of-town business rate values and prices. Any business we talk to will say there is a need for us, at some stage, to ensure that we are cognisant of the challenge of business rates, seasonal worker schemes across hospitality—and agriculture in a constituency like mine—and the wider basis of regulation and tax.
We all want things to be safe and regulated, but we have to remember that big companies can deal with that more easily. They can put teams together to manage it. It will be a cost to them, but they can manage it. SMEs often do not have the resource to do that. They need flexibility to be able to work with their workforce. They often have very small margins and need to be focused on their customers, rather than on what is sometimes seen to be unnecessary regulation and red tape, so we all have a duty to focus on that.
The Minister will be absolutely cognisant of that. From conversations we have had over the years, before either of us were in government, I know how successful
he was in the business sector and I know how well connected he is with the SMEs in his constituency, so I know we will be singing from the same hymn sheet. He has a reputation across the sector as someone who understands the sector and wants to deliver for it—something we all want to do. I just want to take this opportunity to be very clear about its value and importance, and to put on the record what we all know, which is why these businesses matter so much to our communities.