8. What steps he is taking to support high street SMEs.

12. What steps he is taking to support high street businesses.

To breathe life back into Britain’s high streets, we are addressing antisocial behaviour and crime, rolling out banking hubs, stamping out late payments, establishing a licensing taskforce, empowering communities to fill vacant properties and reforming the business rates system. There is more to do and our forthcoming small and medium enterprise strategy will set out further steps.

Warrington South is home to brilliant businesses such as Gourmand!, an award-winning French café, Mamars, a wonderful artisan bakery and deli, Hideout, which serves the best piña colada in Warrington —apparently—and the soon-to-open Zak’s Shack, a new parent and child-focused café in Stockton Heath. Such businesses are the beating heart of our town, built by local entrepreneurs who serve the community they love. However, set-up costs, business rates and other barriers make it harder for them to operate. Will the Minister outline how the Department specifically supports the independent hospitality and food retail sector?

My hon. Friend makes Warrington sound like a particularly attractive place for a Business Minister to visit, so if she does not mind, I will add that to the list of places that I am keen to visit. Independent businesses, as she rightly says, play an important role in supporting local growth and community cohesion. We plan to introduce permanently lower business rates for retail hospitality and leisure properties with a rateable value of under £500,000 and we have introduced a hospitality support scheme to co-fund projects that aim to help those furthest from the job market into employment and to boost productivity. I think that will help many of the businesses in her constituency.

When I am out and about in my constituency, I am always impressed by the dedication of staff and small business owners who bring our high streets to life. Places such as Blaydon’s Precinct and Consett’s Middle Street are at the heart of local pride and identity, but after years of austerity and a cost of living crisis, empty shops and the loss of vital amenities such as banks have taken a toll, especially in the north-east. What are the Government doing to support local businesses and revitalise high streets such as those?

Before I had heard about the attractions of Warrington, I had heard about those of Consett. I was pleased to visit my hon. Friend’s constituency and meet many of the great businesses there just before Christmas. We have introduced measures to fill empty properties, including high-street rental auction powers for councils, which can free up space for new businesses. We are also protecting vital services on the high street through the roll-out of banking hubs, with 170 opened so far. This week, we published our Green Paper on the future of the Post Office, which sets out our plans to do even more to provide banking services on high streets, which, again, I hope will help to bring more footfall on to the high street and help businesses such as the ones that she knows only too well.

The Chancellor announced last year that from the next financial year, 2026-27, we intend to introduce permanently lower tax rates for retail hospitality and leisure properties. A permanent tax cut will ensure that those businesses will benefit from much-needed certainty and support. Treasury colleagues have been engaging businesses on their proposals for a fairer business rates system. The Government plan to publish an interim report on their work and more detail will also be set out in the Budget in the autumn.

Small independent businesses like Kitchen Croxley in my constituency have suggested that, to counter this Government’s national insurance contribution increases, they will need to serve cold coffee and replace staff with touchscreens just to afford to stay open. What will the Minister do to ensure that small businesses are encouraged to grow, rather than being punished for being entrepreneurial, so that local bakeries like Kitchen Croxley can keep serving us cake and coffee?

We have taken a range of measures to support businesses such as the one the hon. Gentleman mentions. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced our plans for a business growth service to make it much easier for businesses to get the advice they need on how they can start up and scale up. The Chancellor set out in the spending review a two-thirds increase in the capacity of the British Business Bank, which will make it a lot easier for businesses to access the finance they need to start up and scale up. As many hospitality businesses continue to point out the significant crime and antisocial behaviour in town centres, the extra police officers that we have recruited, and our commitment to recruit still more, will make it easier to bear down on shoplifting and other antisocial behaviour.

Labour-led West Suffolk district council now charges cafés and restaurants £500 for pavement licences for tables and chairs in front of their premises. Their justification for the cost is that the process for granting a pavement licence is more complex than it may initially appear as it involves a number of checks with highways authorities, the police and counter-terrorism advisers. Will the Minister look at pavement licences as an example of where we can deregulate?

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point about what further measures we can take to bear down on the cost of regulation for small businesses. It is one reason the Chancellor set up a licensing taskforce that has brought forward a series of recommendations and will shortly publish its conclusions, which the Government will respond to quickly. We are absolutely determined to do what we can to bear down on the cost of regulation for SMEs.

I refer the House to my registered interest as a small business owner. Retailers in my constituency, including city centre retailers, tell me that they are on their knees, crippled by soaring costs, rising national insurance contributions, rising antisocial behaviour, expensive and poor parking, and a lack of any city centre regeneration. These long-standing independent businesses—the lifeblood of our community—are now considering closure. Has the Minister considered their clear ask, which is reducing or freezing business rates, and having affordable and accessible parking and community-focused events to revive our high streets?

One measure that the hon. Gentleman referenced was business rates. As I said in answer to previous questions, we are determined to introduce permanently lower business rates for the retail sector for businesses with properties under a value of £500,000. I hope that will make a difference to businesses not only in Leicester in his constituency, but more generally across the country.

I call the shadow Minister.

At the heart of every high street are wonderful hospitality SMEs—pubs, cafés, restaurants, bars and coffee shops—yet the 2024 Budget was a hammer blow to them. With £3.4 billion of extra costs, one in 10 restaurants faces closure this year. Indeed, Labour’s Budget has already cost hospitality 69,000 jobs. For context, in the same period the previous year, hospitality created 18,000 new jobs. Can the Minister assure the House that businesses that are hanging on by a thread will not face a hard landing this winter?

The hon. Gentleman is one of those Conservative Front Benchers who have yet to tell us, if they do not like the increase in national insurance contributions, how they would pay for the extra investment in hospitals, schools and our police force. I gently say that the difficult decisions the Chancellor of the Exchequer had to take in the Budget last year were a direct result of the £22 billion black hole left to us by the Conservatives. Our small business strategy will set out further measures that we will take to have the back of British entrepreneurs.

That answer is simply not good enough for the 63% of employees in the hospitality sector whose jobs are on the line. Yet we now read in the press that the Government appear set on forcing restaurateurs to monitor customers’ calorie consumption—another crippling blow of red tape on top of national insurance hikes, minimum wage hikes and the regulatory firestorm of the Employment Rights Bill. Jeremy Clarkson is not wrong when he says that the Chancellor is “using a machine gun on publicans.” Can the Minister really look hospitality SMEs on our high streets and beyond in the eye and say that this is somehow good for business?

One reason the hon. Gentleman’s party lost the confidence of business is that it promised many, many times that it would reform business rates and never did. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has set out our commitment to permanently lower business rates for the hospitality sector—we have already taken steps in that regard—and she will set out our plans to do even more. That is one way in which we are backing up our commitment to SMEs in the hospitality sector and more generally.