James Murray

Let me remind the hon. Gentleman that, around the difficult decision that we had to take on employer national insurance contributions, we provided explicit protection for small businesses by more than doubling the employment allowance from £5,000 to £10,500, which will benefit hundreds of thousands of small businesses across the country. I suggest that he talks to businesses in his constituency about that. We are not shying away from the fact that difficult decisions were taken in the Budget, but he might also consult the plans that were left in operation by the previous Government in July. If we had pursued those plans, and if we had not taken any action on business rates, the retail, hospitality and leisure relief would have ended entirely next April. The cliff edge looming next April would have seen it go down to zero. We have extended it, despite the tough fiscal circumstances, for another year at 40%. That is a reasonable way forward while we put in place these permanent reforms. As I mentioned, the measures in the Bill to level the playing field for high streets are the beginning of our efforts to transform the system of business rates. Our ambition to go further is set out in the paper published alongside the Budget, “Transforming business rates”. That paper sets out the Government’s priority areas for further reform to support investment and make the system fairer. It invites businesses and industry representatives to work with us on designing the best possible system for the future. I am grateful to all those businesses and representative bodies that I have spoken with in the last few weeks for their engagement already. We will consider what more the Government should do to incentivise investment and growth, including by looking at the efficacy of improvement relief and empty property relief, the impact of losing small business rate relief on expanding businesses, and the cliff edges within the current system.