Mr Gagan Mohindra

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Jardine. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge (Sir Gavin Williamson) on securing this really important debate. I have previously spoken in the House about my background as a small business owner—specifically, a furniture retailer—and I know that business rates represent a massive percentage of the cost of running a small business. For many years, I have thought that we should get rid of business rates. It is a very outdated model, preferred by the Treasury because it is an easy model for collection, but it is destroying our high streets. When I was a retailer, we had an online presence. Post pandemic, more and more people are used to buying online, which means the heart and soul of our communities is being hollowed out. What was once a vibrant high street where people came to do their weekly shop and interact with one another is now somewhere to make a quick trip for necessities. I have spoken before about my views on parking charges, which differ from those of the Lib Dem-run councils in my constituency. Parking charges are part of the formula for a successful high street. I will continue to feed in my view that we need to incentivise the best behaviour possible, with free parking for an hour for the high street, so that people can have their coffee or tea, pick up their dry cleaning, speak to their friends and pop into the library to return books. Those are the intangible things that we risk losing from our communities. Taxes have been discussed. I will be a little bit political, because I know the Minister is well versed in politics in support of high streets. When we are discouraging entrepreneurs from creating businesses, we are fundamentally damaging the structure of the tax base. It is all well and good supporting employees, but we are still waiting for the definition of an employee. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge said, business owners are employees as much as employers. We should support them by saying, “We want you to take the risk of setting up a business with your life savings,” to employ people and give someone that first job, and I fear this Government are failing in that. We all look forward to the spending review and future Budgets that will hopefully not U-turn but nudge policy positions in a way that supports wealth creation. I am lucky enough to represent the great constituency of South West Hertfordshire. I have some really amazing high streets, such as Rickmansworth, Kings Langley, Chorleywood, Croxley Green, Leavesden, South Oxhey, Moor Park, Abbots Langley and many more. But what I have seen over the past five years, especially post pandemic, is an increase in vacancies, and it is taking longer for those vacancies to be occupied. That deters shoppers in my community from going to their local high street, and instead they click and buy from online retailers for convenience, which I am as guilty of doing as anyone else. My plea to the Minister is to create the policies that incentivise great and best behaviour. He will have support from across the House for being brave. With the majority that this Government command, they can start the tax system again with a blank sheet of paper and ask, “What is it that we are trying to achieve?” One of the frustrations that I had when I first got elected in 2019 with our 80-seat majority was that we could have carried out a once-in-a-generation reform of our tax system, especially business rates. If the Minister works closely with the Chancellor to do that, he will have my support.