Business and the Economy
I will let the new Member make his political point. The only thing I will say in response is that in my first two years in Parliament, we dealt with a global pandemic, in which we spent more than £400 billion of taxpayers’ money. When I was elected in December 2019, as part of an 80-seat majority, we were looking to reform our tax base and the way we financed our Government spending, but we did not have that opportunity. With the Government’s current majority, I hope that they are ambitious. Other Members have spoken about business rates reform. It is massively outdated to look at businesses based on bricks and mortar, and if I were a furniture retailer today, I would have an online presence only. However, that would mean that the vibrancy of our high streets would be lost, because they would end up with only bookmakers, hairdressers, charity shops and coffee shops. There is nothing wrong with those, but the high streets that I support and am honoured to be the Member of Parliament for offer significant diversity; we have not yet spoken about banking and the move away from on-street branches, but we are trying to deal with that issue locally through places such as post offices becoming banking hubs. There was a reference earlier to HMRC—and my remarks in this regard are a pitch to the Minister. From my limited experience over the years, HMRC has become increasingly aggressive and not necessarily fair, including in regard to interest rates. If an employer or business makes an overpayment, the interest rate that they receive is different from that which HMRC takes. We should not regard businesses as a cash cow if they have done nothing wrong. I will leave that with the Minister. Further, I would prefer HMRC not to be an arm’s length body; I would be willing at least to investigate whether ministerial control and oversight was practical, on the full understanding that civil servants need to have the freedom to raise and collect revenue. In Hertfordshire, the median weekly wage is £851, which is higher than the UK average of £728. However, with inflation rising—we heard overnight that it is now at 3.5%—and the rising cost of living, people are feeling poorer, which means that they are spending less on our high streets and are less likely to use capital expenditure on their homes, on a new car or on whatever else they would have spent it on if they felt more flush with cash.