Andrew Griffith: Labour are determined to make April the start of fresh misery for businesses and the self-employed
Ask who never gets charged.
Andrew Griffith is the Shadow Secretary of State for Business & Trade, MP for Arundel & South Downs and a former FTSE100 Finance Director & COO.
With just a fortnight to go, the reality of a new slate of socialist measures which will land on the heads of business in Labour’s ‘April Armageddon’ is setting in.
Just as Reeves’s first budget is looked back on as the catalyst that saw unemployment rise almost every month since, and 1 in 6 young people now unable to find a job, this April too will become a milestone. It will be looked back on as the moment when Labour showed once and for all that they don’t understand, or don’t care to understand, what makes our economy tick. What could have been the quiet, administrative start of another tax year will in fact mark a cacophony of a series of anti-growth measures crashing into force.
The broader economic context could not be worse. Last week we had confirmation that this year has started with falling GDP per capita, rising gilt yields and stubbornly high inflation. Business confidence surveys consistently plumb global pandemic depths whilst a declining construction sector is now less ‘build, build, build’ than ‘burn, burn, burn’. And that’s before we talk about energy costs.
The most well understood April assault – thanks to Conservative campaigning and judicious use of opposition day debates in Parliament – is the Chancellor’s staggering rise in business rates. They are already a conceptually flawed tax, levied before businesses have made a pound of revenue or profit and calculated through a capricious method of valuation. Now they’re set to get even worse. While pubs have been granted a temporary reprieve, that U-turn doesn’t extend to shops and restaurants who face an average 50 per cent increase in the coming years. Nor does it help hotels who will see their rates double.
Conservatives have already committed to exempt thousands on our high streets from business rates entirely, cutting them for a quarter of a million shops, pubs, and restaurants. This is fully funded by our plan to reform welfare and get those who can back into work. I hope in time we can go further. Unfortunately, before our plans ride to the rescue, Labour’s changes will have shuttered hundreds of beloved high street outlets and the jobs they create along with them.
While private enterprises are hit and firms close, it’s not all bad news — well not for the public sector anyway.
For on the first of April, Labour’s new super-quango will open its doors. The ‘Fair Work Agency’, an Orwellian name if ever there was one, will have Stasi like powers to raid any business, seize documents, and conduct sweeping and expensive investigations even where not a single employee has raised a complaint. It’s a guilty-until-proven-innocent …
Ask who never gets charged.
Andrew Griffith is the Shadow Secretary of State for Business & Trade, MP for Arundel & South Downs and a former FTSE100 Finance Director & COO.
With just a fortnight to go, the reality of a new slate of socialist measures which will land on the heads of business in Labour’s ‘April Armageddon’ is setting in.
Just as Reeves’s first budget is looked back on as the catalyst that saw unemployment rise almost every month since, and 1 in 6 young people now unable to find a job, this April too will become a milestone. It will be looked back on as the moment when Labour showed once and for all that they don’t understand, or don’t care to understand, what makes our economy tick. What could have been the quiet, administrative start of another tax year will in fact mark a cacophony of a series of anti-growth measures crashing into force.
The broader economic context could not be worse. Last week we had confirmation that this year has started with falling GDP per capita, rising gilt yields and stubbornly high inflation. Business confidence surveys consistently plumb global pandemic depths whilst a declining construction sector is now less ‘build, build, build’ than ‘burn, burn, burn’. And that’s before we talk about energy costs.
The most well understood April assault – thanks to Conservative campaigning and judicious use of opposition day debates in Parliament – is the Chancellor’s staggering rise in business rates. They are already a conceptually flawed tax, levied before businesses have made a pound of revenue or profit and calculated through a capricious method of valuation. Now they’re set to get even worse. While pubs have been granted a temporary reprieve, that U-turn doesn’t extend to shops and restaurants who face an average 50 per cent increase in the coming years. Nor does it help hotels who will see their rates double.
Conservatives have already committed to exempt thousands on our high streets from business rates entirely, cutting them for a quarter of a million shops, pubs, and restaurants. This is fully funded by our plan to reform welfare and get those who can back into work. I hope in time we can go further. Unfortunately, before our plans ride to the rescue, Labour’s changes will have shuttered hundreds of beloved high street outlets and the jobs they create along with them.
While private enterprises are hit and firms close, it’s not all bad news — well not for the public sector anyway.
For on the first of April, Labour’s new super-quango will open its doors. The ‘Fair Work Agency’, an Orwellian name if ever there was one, will have Stasi like powers to raid any business, seize documents, and conduct sweeping and expensive investigations even where not a single employee has raised a complaint. It’s a guilty-until-proven-innocent …
Andrew Griffith: Labour are determined to make April the start of fresh misery for businesses and the self-employed
Ask who never gets charged.
Andrew Griffith is the Shadow Secretary of State for Business & Trade, MP for Arundel & South Downs and a former FTSE100 Finance Director & COO.
With just a fortnight to go, the reality of a new slate of socialist measures which will land on the heads of business in Labour’s ‘April Armageddon’ is setting in.
Just as Reeves’s first budget is looked back on as the catalyst that saw unemployment rise almost every month since, and 1 in 6 young people now unable to find a job, this April too will become a milestone. It will be looked back on as the moment when Labour showed once and for all that they don’t understand, or don’t care to understand, what makes our economy tick. What could have been the quiet, administrative start of another tax year will in fact mark a cacophony of a series of anti-growth measures crashing into force.
The broader economic context could not be worse. Last week we had confirmation that this year has started with falling GDP per capita, rising gilt yields and stubbornly high inflation. Business confidence surveys consistently plumb global pandemic depths whilst a declining construction sector is now less ‘build, build, build’ than ‘burn, burn, burn’. And that’s before we talk about energy costs.
The most well understood April assault – thanks to Conservative campaigning and judicious use of opposition day debates in Parliament – is the Chancellor’s staggering rise in business rates. They are already a conceptually flawed tax, levied before businesses have made a pound of revenue or profit and calculated through a capricious method of valuation. Now they’re set to get even worse. While pubs have been granted a temporary reprieve, that U-turn doesn’t extend to shops and restaurants who face an average 50 per cent increase in the coming years. Nor does it help hotels who will see their rates double.
Conservatives have already committed to exempt thousands on our high streets from business rates entirely, cutting them for a quarter of a million shops, pubs, and restaurants. This is fully funded by our plan to reform welfare and get those who can back into work. I hope in time we can go further. Unfortunately, before our plans ride to the rescue, Labour’s changes will have shuttered hundreds of beloved high street outlets and the jobs they create along with them.
While private enterprises are hit and firms close, it’s not all bad news — well not for the public sector anyway.
For on the first of April, Labour’s new super-quango will open its doors. The ‘Fair Work Agency’, an Orwellian name if ever there was one, will have Stasi like powers to raid any business, seize documents, and conduct sweeping and expensive investigations even where not a single employee has raised a complaint. It’s a guilty-until-proven-innocent …
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