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Small businesses are the backbone of our economy

By 12 July 2017No Comments

Small businesses are the backbone of our economy accounting for 99.3% of all private sector businesses at the start of 2016 and 60% of all private sector employment in the UK or 15.7million people.
The Conservatives have neglected the needs of small business in favour of tax breaks to big business that has failed to stimulate investment and create the high-skilled, well paid jobs the country needs.
The Conservatives’ cliff-edge approach to Brexit risks our access to the single market and damaging all business by prioritising an economically damaging, undeliverable and unworkable cap on immigration at all costs.
Stephen Morgan, Labour’s first ever Member of Parliament for Portsmouth South, said:
“Labour has a positive plan to support local business and would increase lending to SMEs through a network of regional development banks and reintroduce the lower small business corporation tax rate”.
Plans also include:

  • Introducing statutory annual revaluations to stop businesses facing periodic and unmanageable hikes, and guarantee a fair and transparent appeals process.
  • Bringing forward CPI indexation so that businesses aren’t paying more because of how inflation is measured
  • Excluding new investment in plant and machinery from future business rates valuation to encourage investment.
  • Fundamentally reforming the business rates system to ease the burden on traditional high streets and town centres in the age of online shopping and to create a fairer system of business taxation

Stephen added:
“I am fully committed to supporting small businesses in Portsmouth. They are at the heart of a strategy for growth, jobs and an economy that works for all.
In recent months a number of local traders and shops have been affected by crime. This is a huge concern and I will continue to liaise with the police and those businesses affected.
I regularly meet local businesses across the constituency and look forward to further discussions in the coming weeks so that businesses continue to be the backbone of the economy in our great city”.