Kevin Hollinrake

The hon. Member is right; there is no logic to the Government’s approach. They are giving with one hand and taking with the other, and they are making the kinds of decisions he talks about ever more difficult. Lords amendments 2B and 8B address the ratings regime for anchor stores on our beleaguered high streets. We echo the words of the John Lewis chief executive Nish Kankiwala, who warned that Labour’s Budget is a “two-handed grab” at retailers that piles on national insurance increases while refusing to reform business rates as it promised to do. Retailers face a £7 billion hit from these policies, with consumers braced for higher prices as a result. These amendments exempt anchor stores—the vital engines of our town centres—from the higher multiplier. It is a lifeline that Labour seems determined to withhold. Unoccupied anchor stores would also escape this punishing rate, preventing empty shopfronts from becoming permanent scars on our highstreets. Setting the threshold for the higher multiplier at £500,000 is a blunt instrument, as the Minister concedes. I can assure the Government that this will have consequences for businesses that are not big tech giants. It will hit large supermarkets, supermarket delivery and large department stores, showing that the Labour Government have not thought it through. Conservative Members have rightly decried Labour’s neglect of retail, and they are right. The Leader of the Opposition has rightly highlighted that Labour’s rates multiplier fiasco is killing off the high street while real reform is dodged. Businesses face a double whammy of higher taxes and no certainty thanks to a Government who are more interested in punishing aspiration than powering growth.