Wrekin MP: 'Shropshire’s SMEs face an uncertain future'

After delivering her tax-and-high spend Budget last year, Chancellor Rachel Reeves promised worried British businesses that she would not be “coming back with more borrowing or more taxes”.

The Chancellor said her Budget provided the "stability and the platform that we need to move forward".

Just four months later, Labour’s self-described ‘Growth Budget’ has taken Britain from having the fastest growing economy in the G7 to the brink of recession. Inflation and unemployment are rising.

This week, the Chancellor will deliver an Emergency Budget to try to fix problems she herself created through her first, botched budget.

Shortly after last year’s budget, I wrote in the Shropshire Star that new business taxes would lead to lower wages and fewer jobs – not just nationally, but here in Shropshire too.

A recent report by the Shropshire Chamber of Commerce, based on a survey of local businesses, appears to confirm those fears.

Titled ‘Businesses Feeling Squeezed’, the report shows, since Labour’s budget, some Shropshire businesses are looking to cut staff, more are worried about inflation, and investment in training and new machinery is taking a hit.

Of those businesses surveyed, most suggested the last budget had negative effect on their business.

Then there is the problem of the Government’s Employment Rights Bill.

By giving employees the right to take parental leave and demand flexible working from ‘day one’, the Bill would pile more costs, risk, and red tape onto Shropshire’s 21,000 SMEs.

No wonder the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) says the Bill will “inevitably deter small employers from taking on new people.”

The previous Conservative government improved employee rights on flexible working, parental leave, and redundancy protections. 

That was the right thing to do. It also increased the National Living Wage and legislated to ensure workers keep tips left for them by customers.

Those changes were introduced gradually and in consultation with business.

They were not rammed through to please trade unions or to implement a flawed, socialist, ‘one size fits all’ anti-business model.

In contrast, the FSB has condemned Labour’s Bill as “rushed, clumsy, chaotic, and poorly planned.”

No member of the current Labour Cabinet has ever run a business, and the Employment Rights Bill could only have been written by a group of people who have never run a business.

Even the Government has now admitted its own new legislation could cost businesses £4.5 billion annually.

Employees might in theory get more rights, but their jobs will be less secure, and many potential new jobs will simply not be created. Redundancies are on the rise.

Under this Chancellor, Shropshire’s SMEs face an uncertain future where they are over-taxed, over-regulated, and under-valued by government.

Like him or loathe him, in his recent State of the Union address, President Donald Trump said he wanted to “make America rich again”.

By contrast, Rachel Reeves’ choices appear set to ‘Make Britain Broke Again’ - as happened under the last Labour government.