Gareth Thomas

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving me the prompt to get on to the issues around the Budget next week. He will understand, as one or two of his colleagues alluded to earlier, that I will not speculate on what will or will not be included in the Chancellor’s Budget. However, I can say that we recognise the very important role that hospitality businesses play in supporting local economies and communities, and we understand the pressures facing those businesses. When we were in Opposition, one of the biggest complaints we heard from high street businesses was the unfairness of the antiquated system of business rates. I apologise to him—I appreciate it is difficult to hear—but I think one of the reasons his party lost the confidence of the business community was because it had made multiple promises to abolish or reform the business rates system, but never actually got to that issue. Business rates are particularly unfair for hospitality, leisure and tourism businesses which, as others have alluded to, create 5% of the UK’s GDP but pay 15% of all business rates. Not only is the current system of business rates unfair, but we know that it disincentivises investment, creates uncertainty and places an undue burden on our highstreets, and in the context of this debate, on pubs and hospitality and venues. That is why we included in our manifesto a commitment to reform business rates, and it is why the Chancellor has continued to commit to setting out next steps on that at the next Budget.