Stuart Anderson

He raises a huge point. In my constituency of 700 square miles, the local pub and village hall are community hubs. After Remembrance Sunday, I took my family to the Queens in Ludlow. I have met many publicans across South Shropshire. Experienced publicans are still just able to keep trading on reserves, but they are not really making a profit. The ones who are just setting out to build up that reserve are going broke. It is just not a viable situation for them at the moment. Council tax bills doubled in the time that Labour was last in power, representing an extra £751 on an average band D home. The Conservatives put in veto powers to ensure that council tax did not increase over a certain amount. We allowed local areas to receive the funding that they wanted by raising council tax within 5%, but without excessive rises. At the moment, less funding is going into rural areas but council tax is going up by a dramatic amount, so people are paying more and getting less. The County Councils Network has named Shropshire council as one of 16 local authority areas that will see significant cuts in direct Government funding. It suggests that there will be about £9 million of cuts to Government funding over the next three years. That will affect many different services, including Shropshire Fire and Rescue Service, which has said so on record. I have written to many constituents as part of my “shop local” survey, and I have heard from almost 10% of them—thousands of people have responded. People say that they love going to the local high street and want to do so. However, the footfall numbers are dropping. Businesses say that they do not have confidence, and that it is getting harder and harder to trade. That is causing major issues on the high street. We must release the stranglehold on the high street and encourage growth. The biggest factor, businesses tell me, is the tax hikes, which are crippling. I make a plea to the Government to change their approach to taxing small businesses, or they will destroy the country.