Andrew Griffith: Labour just don’t care about Britain’s small businesses
Law enforcement shouldn't be political.
Andrew Griffith MP is Shadow Secretary of State for Business & Trade and Conservative MP for Arundel & South Downs.
It’s a common refrain that Whitehall doesn’t care about the little guy.
Small businesses, the self-employed, those looking for their first job — they’re not wrong to feel neglected or ignored. This Labour government rarely thinks about business but if it does so at all, it is big business to which they turn. Perhaps as those tend to be unionised. Or they feel more comfortable amongst their armies of lawyers and lobbyists. Maybe it’s just ignorance in that if you’ve never worked in the private sector, every business seems the same.
Either way, there is a key dividing line here between Labour and our own Conservative approach.
By contrast, when I think about business – reflecting the composition of my own constituency of small towns with no single large employer at all – it is the hair salon, the chain of bakers, the one unit lock up in an industrial estate, an early years nursery, the pub or a self-employed tradesman with a van who is front of my mind. The type of family or privately owned businesses which make up 5.6 million small businesses employing 13 million people.
So, we Conservatives will put the smallest businesses, the self-employed and those at the very start of their careers or thinking of starting a business one day at the heart of our policy making.
Of course, it’s not either/or. We do need the Rolls Royces and GSKs. But good policy making starts with the end in mind and it is the smallest businesses where the rubber hits the road, where the margins of error are tightest and where the sort of ill-thought through policies and taxes that this government seems to specialise in, are fatal.
I’ve said on Con Home before that I believe in office Conservatives did not give sufficiently full-throated support to enterprise. Higher taxes post pandemic, permitting red tape to proliferate rather than be slashed, and allowing HMRC to do their worst on IR35. But the past year and a half have thrown this into stark relief.
A death tax which exempts private equity owners and multinationals but singles out British-owned family businesses. The £25 billion National Insurance rate rise and threshold changes which penalise hiring. Energy cost rises. Business rate hikes of tens and even hundreds of per cent on our high street premises.
Not for nothing is the online speculation about what the hospitality sector must have done to Rachel Reeves in a former life!
In meetings last week I spoke with dozens of business owners employing thousands of people. Ordinary people doing extraordinary things but having to make difficult choices. A hotel owner looking to move to an employment-lite, ‘’room rental’ model. A chain of early years nurseries …
Law enforcement shouldn't be political.
Andrew Griffith MP is Shadow Secretary of State for Business & Trade and Conservative MP for Arundel & South Downs.
It’s a common refrain that Whitehall doesn’t care about the little guy.
Small businesses, the self-employed, those looking for their first job — they’re not wrong to feel neglected or ignored. This Labour government rarely thinks about business but if it does so at all, it is big business to which they turn. Perhaps as those tend to be unionised. Or they feel more comfortable amongst their armies of lawyers and lobbyists. Maybe it’s just ignorance in that if you’ve never worked in the private sector, every business seems the same.
Either way, there is a key dividing line here between Labour and our own Conservative approach.
By contrast, when I think about business – reflecting the composition of my own constituency of small towns with no single large employer at all – it is the hair salon, the chain of bakers, the one unit lock up in an industrial estate, an early years nursery, the pub or a self-employed tradesman with a van who is front of my mind. The type of family or privately owned businesses which make up 5.6 million small businesses employing 13 million people.
So, we Conservatives will put the smallest businesses, the self-employed and those at the very start of their careers or thinking of starting a business one day at the heart of our policy making.
Of course, it’s not either/or. We do need the Rolls Royces and GSKs. But good policy making starts with the end in mind and it is the smallest businesses where the rubber hits the road, where the margins of error are tightest and where the sort of ill-thought through policies and taxes that this government seems to specialise in, are fatal.
I’ve said on Con Home before that I believe in office Conservatives did not give sufficiently full-throated support to enterprise. Higher taxes post pandemic, permitting red tape to proliferate rather than be slashed, and allowing HMRC to do their worst on IR35. But the past year and a half have thrown this into stark relief.
A death tax which exempts private equity owners and multinationals but singles out British-owned family businesses. The £25 billion National Insurance rate rise and threshold changes which penalise hiring. Energy cost rises. Business rate hikes of tens and even hundreds of per cent on our high street premises.
Not for nothing is the online speculation about what the hospitality sector must have done to Rachel Reeves in a former life!
In meetings last week I spoke with dozens of business owners employing thousands of people. Ordinary people doing extraordinary things but having to make difficult choices. A hotel owner looking to move to an employment-lite, ‘’room rental’ model. A chain of early years nurseries …
Andrew Griffith: Labour just don’t care about Britain’s small businesses
Law enforcement shouldn't be political.
Andrew Griffith MP is Shadow Secretary of State for Business & Trade and Conservative MP for Arundel & South Downs.
It’s a common refrain that Whitehall doesn’t care about the little guy.
Small businesses, the self-employed, those looking for their first job — they’re not wrong to feel neglected or ignored. This Labour government rarely thinks about business but if it does so at all, it is big business to which they turn. Perhaps as those tend to be unionised. Or they feel more comfortable amongst their armies of lawyers and lobbyists. Maybe it’s just ignorance in that if you’ve never worked in the private sector, every business seems the same.
Either way, there is a key dividing line here between Labour and our own Conservative approach.
By contrast, when I think about business – reflecting the composition of my own constituency of small towns with no single large employer at all – it is the hair salon, the chain of bakers, the one unit lock up in an industrial estate, an early years nursery, the pub or a self-employed tradesman with a van who is front of my mind. The type of family or privately owned businesses which make up 5.6 million small businesses employing 13 million people.
So, we Conservatives will put the smallest businesses, the self-employed and those at the very start of their careers or thinking of starting a business one day at the heart of our policy making.
Of course, it’s not either/or. We do need the Rolls Royces and GSKs. But good policy making starts with the end in mind and it is the smallest businesses where the rubber hits the road, where the margins of error are tightest and where the sort of ill-thought through policies and taxes that this government seems to specialise in, are fatal.
I’ve said on Con Home before that I believe in office Conservatives did not give sufficiently full-throated support to enterprise. Higher taxes post pandemic, permitting red tape to proliferate rather than be slashed, and allowing HMRC to do their worst on IR35. But the past year and a half have thrown this into stark relief.
A death tax which exempts private equity owners and multinationals but singles out British-owned family businesses. The £25 billion National Insurance rate rise and threshold changes which penalise hiring. Energy cost rises. Business rate hikes of tens and even hundreds of per cent on our high street premises.
Not for nothing is the online speculation about what the hospitality sector must have done to Rachel Reeves in a former life!
In meetings last week I spoke with dozens of business owners employing thousands of people. Ordinary people doing extraordinary things but having to make difficult choices. A hotel owner looking to move to an employment-lite, ‘’room rental’ model. A chain of early years nurseries …
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