Lisa Nandy MP: We will help our small businesses

​Small Business Saturday aims to highlight the vital role that small businesses play in our economy and in our communities and encourages us all to support them by shopping locally.

There are over 5.6 million small businesses in the UK, creating more than 16 million jobs and boosting our economy by £2.4 trillion.

Small businesses are the beating heart of the British economy. By creating jobs for local people, bringing our high streets to life and delivering vital services for communities, they benefit us all.

However, too many small business owners are having to put in enormous efforts just to make ends meet. Many say they feel overlooked by the Conservative Government and, after 13 years of economic failure and the impact of the pandemic, are now left to fend for themselves with little help and little hope for a positive future.

In Wigan, Office of National Statistics figures show that over 1,300 businesses folded in 2022 alone.

Labour has been listening to the concerns of small business leaders across the country and have developed a new Plan for Small Businesses to help them overcome the challenges they are facing and create the environment they need to thrive.

We know that late payments are a scourge on small businesses with 50,000 businesses going under every year due to cashflow problems.

As part of our plan a Labour Government would introduce tough new laws to make sure small businesses get paid on time.

We would also scrap the UK’s broken business rates system and replace it with a fairer system to reduce the burden on high street premises and support firms who want to expand.

We will revitalise Britain’s high streets by tackling anti-social behaviour: introducing new town centre police patrols, cracking down on shoplifters and creating a specific offence of assault against shop workers.

Councils would be given new powers to take over empty shops and reopen them, offering them to local small businesses for a discounted rent.

Two thirds of small businesses report that they are being held back because they cannot access the skilled workforce needed to expand and grow.

So we will look to address skills shortages by creating a new expert body - Skills England – to oversee the national skills effort and by creating Technical Excellence Colleges that will work with local small businesses to ensure local people have the skills their area needs.

We will also get Britain building again by reforming the planning system to build 1.5 million homes over the next Parliament, creating business opportunities for small building firms and tradespeople across the country.

With our aim of making the UK a clean energy superpower, Labour will cut energy bills for small businesses and create hundreds of thousands of jobs in small businesses involved in the clean energy sector.

Labour is proud to back our small businesses and with this plan we have a serious blueprint to create the environment​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ small businesses across the country are crying out for.