Peter Fortune

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. Saying one thing and doing another is something that we are getting very used to from this Government. What would we do? We would halve employer national insurance for workers aged 21 to 24, taking the main rate down to 7.5%. We are not inventing a new idea here. Under-21s and apprentices under 25 already pay no national insurance on most earnings. That was a Conservative reform and this Government have kept it, so I take it that they agree that it works. All we are asking is why that help should stop on someone’s 21st birthday, just as so many are leaving university or college and looking for a proper start. Nor is it only a Conservative idea. The cross-party Work and Pensions Committee recommended in July that the Government extend the relief to all under-25s. When a Committee with both Labour and Conservative Members agrees on something, it is usually worth a second look. Most of us in this House remember our first job and the person who took a chance on us. Mine was at the South London Press in Streatham—though, to be fair, I think they regarded that as a mistake pretty sharpish. For a lot of young people, that first chance comes as a job in a café, shop, pub or hotel. Those are exactly the businesses that this tax hits hardest and that our plans would help most. On business rates, we would give retail, hospitality and leisure businesses full relief—up to £110,000 each—so that our high streets have genuine room to grow and hire. We look at the whole bill that businesses face—not one line of it—because that is how the person running a business has to look at it too. Napoleon supposedly called us a nation of shopkeepers. I am sure he meant it as an insult, but as we know things did not go terribly well for poor old Boney after that, and I consider it a compliment—a strength, part of our industrious culture and something we can be proud of. The motion asks the House to agree with something that most of our constituents would think goes without saying: that the person who opens the shop, runs the pub or builds the extension and who pays the wages of the people working alongside them is a working person. If Members agree with that, they can say so tonight in the Lobby.