Yuan Yang
MP for Earley and Woodley · Labour · United Kingdom
“Putin’s war in Ukraine and Trump’s war in Iran have shown us the need to make Britain more resilient against global energy shocks. Can my hon.”
“If they had bought the same house on a new build estate built in the last two decades, it would have likely come with estate charges, standing charges for some, and often low-quality roads and communal infrastructure that will never have any route to adoption by the local council.”
“I thank the Housing Minister for all his tireless work on these landmark commonhold reforms—I only hope he finds my constant lobbying not too tiresome. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi) for her leadership on this issue. My parents and grandparents are in the Gallery today.”
“As a result, over a thousand constituents have been in touch with me, seeking advice for taking control of property management and breaking free of the monopoly held over them. The problems are not just about charges.”
“Q11. Thames Water’s headquarters are local to my town of Reading, but it is their distant creditors who are really in charge. Investors should be rewarded for success, but they should pay for their failures. That is why I strongly welcome the Government’s objections to the current creditors deal.”
“I thank the Minister for her statement. Tomorrow, I will be bringing Thames Water’s management into Parliament to answer a simple question: what improvements will my constituents get in return for the increases in their bills?”
The complete record
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“I very much agree with that sentiment. Young people are the future, and to ensure they get off to the best possible start in life, they need work that pays and enables them to live in stability, not concerned about paying the bills from day to day or month to month. Most young people nowadays have to do a mixture of work and education or training to make ends meet. More than half of full-time students were working long hours in paid jobs in 2024, which is a significant rise from 2021, during the pandemic, when two thirds had no term-time employment. That has been driven by the escalating cost of living for young people, and especially rises in rent. I want to quote a constituent of mine called Poppy, who is 20 years old and studies at the University of Reading. She says: “Working part-time was never optional but rather a necessity...”
“I strongly congratulate the Secretary of State on the £1 billion package of employment support. Many active labour market policies have been shown to have considerable economic impact. Historically, it has been difficult for the Office for National Statistics to score the positive impacts of active policies, as opposed to the more straightforward impacts of budget reductions. Will the Secretary of State commit to working cross-departmentally to ensure that we have long-term investment in the health of our nation, which is so fundamental to the wealth of our economy?”
“An inquiry can also help us know how to avoid this ever happening again to any other club. The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee and the Business and Trade Select Committee to launch an inquiry into the ownership and governance affairs of Reading Football Club since 29 May 2012 on grounds of public interest, with a particular focus on the governance of Reading Football Club since May 2017. And the petitioners remain, etc. ] [P003051]”
“(v) Under the Football Governance Bill, an “Independent Football Regulator” (“IFR”) will assume responsibility for regulation of professional football in England, including in relation to financial sustainability and fan engagement matters. (vi) An inquiry into the circumstances referenced in paragraph (iv) above would likely identify areas for consideration by the IFR which ought to be taken into account in designing the framework under which the IFR will operate. It will also help identify which stakeholders, past and present, are ultimately responsible for the deterioration of RFC, provide supporters of RFC and other stakeholders with a much-needed explanation for the same, and contribute towards a successful outcome to RFC’s current sustainability crisis.”
“(ii) The ownership changes culminated in the ultimate beneficial owners of RFC becoming Mr Dai Yongge and Ms Dai Xiu Li in May 2017. The Dais have overseen a deterioration in all material affairs of RFC, prejudicing the sustainability of RFC. (iii) The Dais expressed openness to selling RFC in September 2023 but no sale, or commitment to such a sale, has yet taken place, despite numerous well-publicised expressions of interest. (iv) The circumstances surrounding RFC’s deterioration, and the lengthy, unsuccessful sale process conducted by the Dais are unclear, with limited information made available to stakeholders in RFC and misinformation rife.”
“The petitioners therefore request “that the House of Commons urge the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee and the Business and Trade Select Committee to launch an inquiry into the ownership and governance affairs of Reading Football Club since 29 May 2012 on grounds of public interest, with a particular focus on the governance of Reading Football Club since May 2017. And the petitioners remain, etc.” Following is the full text of the petition: [ The petition of the residents of Reading and supporters of Reading Football Club , Declares that: (i) Since 29 May 2012, ownership of Reading Football Club (“RFC”) and its material assets has passed through a number of different owners, following a period of sustained success under the custodianship of Sir John Madejski.”
“I rise to present a petition on behalf of the residents of Reading and supporters of Reading football club. Over 600 people have signed the paper petition and over 10,000 have signed an online version, showing the strength of feeling from local fan groups who wish to keep our club alive. Reading is not the only club to have suffered from ownership problems. In fact, too many clubs across the country have done so, showing the importance of learning from our experiences at Reading.”
“They knew I had an interest in scrutinising companies with complex structures and distant owners, and they asked whether I had an interest in scrutinising a local company with a complex structure and distant owners. But fans should not have to do that kind of scrutiny. Life needs to be a lot simpler for fans just to be able to follow the game, and not worry about whether the game is up for their local club. So many fans have experienced what Reading has gone through, and we owe it to them to voice the problems that we see across the football pyramid. I will pick out three particular problems, which I am sure will feel familiar for many of those listening: first, how clubs receive income; secondly, how they spend their money; and thirdly, irresponsible ownership.”
“That is a precarious situation for any business to be in, but football clubs are not just any business; they are the foundation of many of our communities, and they bring many of us pride in the areas that we live in. One of the clubs that might be technically insolvent is Reading football club, which has its home stadium in my constituency of Earley and Woodley. Reading is one of the oldest clubs in England, and had previously been known for its good management. Now, after four winding-up petitions, five points deductions and persistent late tax payments, Reading sits on the brink. I started getting involved with the campaign to rescue Reading football club when I bumped into some fans at a local fair in Woodley a few years ago, who had read my reporting in the Financial Times .”
“Since the premier league was formed over three decades ago, over 50 clubs in the top six tiers of the English men’s football pyramid have gone into administration. One of those clubs is Bury. After being sold for £1 in 2019, Bury went out of business and was expelled from the league. The following year, 2020, saw the demise of Macclesfield Town and Wigan Athletic going into administration. In the following year, 2021, while England’s top six clubs briefly broke away to try to form a European league, Derby County slipped into administration. These clubs and this chaos is just the tip of the iceberg. According to research by the non-governmental organisation Fair Game, the majority of the top 92 clubs in the game are technically insolvent, meaning their liabilities exceed their assets.”
“I beg to move, That this House has considered the financial sustainability and governance of English football. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Turner. Clubs across the country face unsustainable finances and poor governance, which is why so many MPs have gathered here to represent their local clubs. We have a range of clubs from up and down the football pyramid and up and down the country: from Brighton to Basingstoke, from Bolton to Luton, from Wolves to Aylesbury. We have MPs from various parties, and we even have Reading fans in the same room as Oxford United fans, showing the unity and strength of feeling across Parliament that football must have a sustainable future. Before I go into the concerns that we all share, and the remedies we would like to see, I will give a brief history of how we got here.”
“Reading’s current owners, Dai Yongge and Dai Xiu Li, took over in 2017 when Reading was near the top of the championship. They also chased the dream. By 2021, Reading football club was spending over 200% of its annual revenue on player wages. Overall, Reading’s owners have invested over £200 million in the club. It is no surprise that they would spend at that level. The NGO Fair Game has shown a clear correlation between how high a club is in the league and how high its spending is on wages. This competition is made more intense because of parachute payments, which I will not go into at length. However, overall, the pressure to compete means that clubs often spend beyond their means. This is unsustainable. We have spending rules such as financial fair play, but breaches continue to happen.”
“The national popularity of the premier league rests on our strong local football cultures, which are spread by clubs in their communities and the sports charities attached to them, working with people aged six to 60-plus. However, last year, the premier league and the EFL failed to agree a deal for a more equitable distribution of funding between clubs, underscoring just how sticky the first problem of income is. The second problem is the money going out—the expenditure. Costs have been driven up to unsustainable levels. The concentration of riches in the premier league creates an overwhelming incentive to spend big and chase the dream. According to football finance expert Kieran Maguire, on average, for every £100 a championship club brings in through revenue, it spends £101 in wages. That is clearly unsustainable.”
“In comparison, the German Bundesliga ensures an 80:20 split between the top two divisions. Meanwhile, the Union of European Football Associations—better known as UEFA—allocates 75% to the champions league and 25% to the two competitions below it. Those leagues have chosen those ratios because they find that it creates a sustainable pyramid for them. The EFL has long sought a similar distribution ratio with the premier league. We want all clubs to work together to protect the pyramid as a whole because, without its base, the top of the game would crumble. As we all know, the pyramid serves as a platform for player development and talent spotting. Reading’s Michael Olise broke through locally and moved on to Crystal Palace, and I am sure that we can think of many such examples.”
“That dealmaking is notable for many reasons, not just the large amount of money involved. The 20 premier league clubs get together to sell a deal collectively. However, economists and competition lawyers have raised concerns about the impact that collective selling has on fans and smaller clubs, and they have argued that collective selling is justified only when there is a public benefit. However, most clubs do not currently benefit from these broadcast revenues. The vast majority stay in the premier league and, as a result, the gap between the top and the rest grows wider every season. This season, premier league clubs and the four recently relegated clubs held on to 94% of the league’s broadcast revenues. That means that the remainder of the 68 clubs in the EFL received just 6%.”
“I agree with my hon. Friend, who is an advocate for his local club, that too many clubs across the country are suffering from the unfair distribution through the football pyramid. In fact, that is the first issue I will describe: the problem with the money going in. The last four decades have seen a complete transformation in English football, which has been characterised by a widening gap between the clubs at the very top and the rest of the football pyramid. Ticket sales over that time have become less important as a source of revenue. Instead, the biggest source has become the multibillion-pound broadcast deals agreed by the Premier League. We all celebrate the success of the Premier League’s dealmaking, generating the most revenue out of the big five European leagues.”
“Credible bidders for the club—some of whom I have had the fortune to speak to—have made offers, and they have been turned down and dragged through lengthy negotiations. Bidders have faced difficulties in navigating the ownership structure of the club in which the stadium, the training grounds and the club itself have been separated into different corporate entities, and in which club assets have been used as collateral for other loans.”
“I agree with my hon. Friend, who has a deep interest in her local clubs. Fans need to be able to see their clubs perform in their local area. Many MPs who are in this debate have concerns about the relocation of their grounds or lack of appropriate grounds. The final problem is ownership. The first two problems have shown how little incentive there is to be a well-run club that spends responsibly. Most clubs rely on a generous owner to stay afloat. When the good will or cash flow of that owner starts to run dry, clubs often have nowhere else to turn. Reading fans know the perils of this dependence. The current owners, the Dai siblings, put the club up for sale almost two years ago, but they have not been seen at the club in well over a year. Fans have mostly been kept in the dark.”
“I very much agree. Stadiums are also vital community assets. I look forward to one day seeing Reading beat Oxford at the new Kidlington stadium. What the EFL has at present is the use of fines. The owners of Reading have been fined on numerous occasions for failing to fund their monthly wage bill, but that has not changed behaviour. The most frustrating thing for Reading fans, as I am sure it has been for Portsmouth, Leeds, Bury and Charlton fans before them, is a feeling that the whole chaos could have been avoided if the EFL had had sufficient powers to implement a more robust owners test when the current owners, the Dai siblings, first took over.”
“That is absolutely the case. My hon. Friend highlights the history of his club in Brighton. In the ’80s and ’90s when the future was unclear, it was down to the owners. Too much, unfortunately, is down to, as he mentioned, the lottery of ownership. Brighton and Hove is now a well-managed club. I think we can have many such positive stories across the country, including a positive story, and a positive outcome, for Reading, but the question about football governance and sustainability affects all of us in this room today.”
“I always appreciate my fellow Treasury Committee member’s comments on the correct regulation of markets, but I would argue that football clubs are not simply a commodity and football competition is not simply a market. If we were to accept that view and for the sake of argument say, “Let’s treat the competitions as a market”, I would argue that we have severe market failure when over 50 clubs have gone into administration in the last four decades. The externalities of that market failure are borne too much by the fans sitting in the room with us today.”
“Football has a problem around governance and financial sustainability, but fans and Parliament working together can fix it. I am glad the House is considering this motion.”
“While Reading is in exclusive talks with a new potential buyer, we need to ensure that the same story is not repeated anywhere else, so I am delighted that the Government are bringing the Football Governance Bill through Parliament to create an independent football regulator. I will be meeting the shadow regulator in a few weeks to ensure that they have a full picture of what has happened at Reading, and what can happen when absent owners neglect their clubs. I encourage all Members to do the same. We need a right-touch regulator that helps us to build a football pyramid with strong foundations, and we need a football regulator that can pass the Reading test, so that fans elsewhere do not have to go through the problems that Reading went through.”
“Constituents always tell me how important Reading FC is to them and how important it has been to their families going back generations. Just the other day I received an email from a fifth generation Reading fan. One constituent wrote to me: “Reading was and is a family club”— a club in previous years awarded family excellence status. Yet it is at risk of not being around for the families of tomorrow. Working with fan groups—some are here with us today—since my election last year, I have seen at first hand how motivated those volunteers are by this common cause. Fans want to see a competition for points; they do not want a competition to the death.”
“I agree with my hon. Friend. Parachute payments skew the financial incentives in the game. I also agree that we do not have the full competition that would allow clubs to play their best game, which is what we fans want to see. Why does all of this matter? It is about the community at the end of the day. Some might say it is only a game, but for many of my constituents the importance of our football club stretches beyond the game and into the community. Reading football club’s community trust is run by volunteers. It supports young people and promotes social inclusion and participation in sport. In many of our most deprived communities across the country, it is the local club that sets a model for aspiration.”
“More regulation would mean more stability across the pyramid and would prevent the situation we are in today, under which so many Members in this room have seen their local clubs go into administration, and which the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe) experienced when he was the chair of Southampton and it went into administration. For those clubs that have experienced administration, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Phil Brickell) described, the impact on fans and on staff is immense. My hon. Friend the Member for Luton South and South Bedfordshire (Rachel Hopkins) described how fans can rescue a club from administration, but so few manage to go down that route and emerge successfully. My 90 minutes is drawing to a close, and there is no extra time for us in this match.”
“I urge Opposition Members to maintain the cross-party consensus that was built over the last Parliament, when we all identified the need for independent football regulation. I recognise the concerns voiced by the right hon. Member for Salisbury (John Glen) and the hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Luke Evans) about the effects of a new regulator. I see where they are coming from, but I would argue that regulation can only increase international business confidence in the integrity of our football pyramid. There have been legal challenges already in the past few decades about the collective selling in the premier league, and I believe that better governance would reassure all those looking on that the public benefit argument has been sufficiently thought through.”
“Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr French), describe the history of the Bill, but then sidestep that history and seem to oppose the current Bill. I also note that he did not respond to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Peter Swallow) about why he had changed his mind. For many clubs across the country, we need regulation sooner rather than later, as my hon. Friends the Members for Derby North (Catherine Atkinson), for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East (Andy McDonald) and for Harlow (Chris Vince) pointed out. Every day we wait means another day that the staff of Reading football club forgo their wages and fans forgo certainty. My neighbour the hon. Member for Wokingham (Clive Jones), who described this as a cross-party issue.”
“Friend the Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn) described how much of a presence her local club has in her town. My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (David Williams) spoke about how his local club, Port Vale, received an award for its community value, and he described the value of the cohesion that a football club can bring as a focal point for the community. My hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge), who has worked at length with her local club the Shrimps, described how clubs can bring people together. I recognise that Morecambe football club faces a severely urgent need for an independent regulator. Because of that urgency, I was actually quite disappointed to hear the shadow Minister, the hon.”
“I thank all hon. Members who have made speeches or interventions today. I also thank the Minister for her response and reassurance that she and this Government will continue to take seriously the real and pressing need for better football governance in this country. I am glad that she mentioned this Government’s amendments and additions to the Bill, particularly concerning fan consultation. I think we can all agree that we are here today in this Chamber because of the fans we represent. Many hon. Members have brought up the social value of clubs and the community value that they bring to us. As my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (Dan Aldridge) pointed out, it is rare in any other walk of life to find a club that spans youth clubs and elderly people’s clubs and does work across the spectrum of ages and backgrounds. My hon.”
“The referee is very clear that I cannot give way. I pay tribute to those hon. Members who mentioned the importance of non-league clubs and of Scottish clubs, which are not covered by English football regulation. However, given that this is a Backbench Business debate, as I remind the shadow Minister, we can cover all topics that we deem fit. Football is not just a business, yet it has to endure as a business. Clubs are not just commodities; they are central to our community. I thank all fans watching this debate, in Parliament and beyond, and our local fan groups in Reading, Sell Before We Dai and the Supporters Trust at Reading. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered the financial sustainability and governance of English football.”
“The Sport Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley South (Stephanie Peacock), was kind enough to meet me and Reading football club fans last year to discuss the urgent need for an independent football regulator. Since then, the legislation has been held up in the other place by Conservative peers, and I was appalled to hear that the Leader of the Opposition sees an independent regulator as “a waste of money”. Fans and staff in Reading will be able to tell the Secretary of State the importance of the need for a regulator, so will she visit the stadium in my constituency to meet them in person?”
“I thank the Secretary of State for her very clear statement. The bigger picture that the Opposition are missing here is that the British media at large have greatly suffered from a lack of access in Gaza during the deadliest war on record for journalists. My former colleagues have variously been denied entry and had unnecessarily prolonged and risky exits, and our Palestinian contributors have been stuck in a living nightmare. Will the Secretary of State ensure that she continues to safeguard British media interests and their reporting abroad and work with Foreign Office colleagues to enlarge access for journalists in Gaza?”
“I thank the Minister for her remarks, particularly about the funding for regional improvement teams in schools. Two weeks ago, my constituents in Shinfield and Whitley received the devastating news that their local secondary school, Oakbank, had received its worst ever Ofsted report. Parents and former staff at that school have asked me how the Anthem schools trust, which has failed not just schools in my constituency but several others in recent years, can be held to account. Will the Minister set out how the new accountability framework will put in place safeguards against failing multi-academy trusts?”
“Although I am very much in support of reviews, and the OBR is the right body to conduct ongoing reviews of the impact of taxation on growth, does the hon. Gentleman want to set out any direction in which the Opposition might want to take business taxes? If there is a certain direction, where will the costs and savings come from?”
“Might it not be more appropriate to view the measure in the context of the housing crisis that our country is currently in, and the record proportion of under-35s living at home with their parents rather than being able to live in their own accommodation? Does the hon. Member agree that there should be no tax incentives for accommodation to be turned into short-term furnished lets as opposed to long-term living places?”
“I am glad that we have returned to this topic, because I was about to ask the hon. Gentleman whether he might clarify the relationship between his remarks and the commercial letting of furnished holiday accommodation— [ Interruption. ] But of course I support the equalisation of tax measures provided for by the clause.”
“The hon. Gentleman raises the question of estimates around the level of revenue that would be generated by this important measure. Is he familiar with the work of Andy Summers and Arun Advani at LSE and the University of Warwick? Three years ago, in 2022, they modelled the effect of the 2017 tax reforms on non-doms and used that as a basis for statistical estimates for the proposal before us. While economics is a science that does to the best it can with the data available, I think there are some quite substantial measures available on the table for this proposal.”
“The ceasefire deal gives families in Israel and Palestine, as well as their relatives in my constituency, hope for longer-lasting peace and security. However, there can be no security without accountability, and there is no accountability without scrutiny—scrutiny, for example, to ensure that the funding the Government have pledged for UNRWA reaches its intended destination. This war has been the deadliest on record for journalists, so what can the Government do to ensure that all journalists in Palestine, including my former colleagues, can do their job without fear for their lives?”
“I thank the Chancellor for raising the case of Jimmy Lai. I hope that the Government will in future press the case of pensions owed to British national overseas constituents in Earley and Woodley, and across the UK, who have moved here from Hong Kong. I was surprised to hear the shadow Chancellor advocate knee-jerk responses to inter-day movements in market prices. I would argue that such short-termism led to the Conservative party having five Chancellors in only four years. Will the Chancellor reassure us that she will not be misled by short-termism, and that she will instead keep her focus on our Government’s long-term ambition to raise living standards and growth?”
“My constituents in Whitley had their Christmas disrupted by an alarming threat of knife crime. We have seen too many tragedies of this kind in Reading over the last few years, so I wholeheartedly welcome the Government’s mission to halve knife crime. I have applied for my Earley and Woodley constituency to be a trial location for the new respect orders. Will the Home Secretary meet me and my constituents to discuss how we can tackle the root problems that cause people, particularly young people, to carry knives?”
“I recently met medics from the Royal Berkshire hospital as well as other constituents from Earley and Woodley who described the atrocious conditions in which their Palestinian colleagues and relatives continue to operate in the medical facilities that remain in Gaza. I am thankful that the Minister has raised detained medical professionals with the Israeli authorities, and I thank him for all the work that he has done to ensure that our Government are leading on international humanitarian law. However, as I am sure he has heard from many Labour Members, we would like more action; we do not think that the current action is enough. I remind him of the comments made by the Prime Minister on looking into sanctions against Minister Ben-Gvir and Minister Smotrich for their comments supporting the illegal resettlement of northern Gaza.”
“Many Members of successive previous Governments have said that we need to simplify our tax system. I suggest that asking for dozens of small amendments to a Bill is not a way to achieve that aim. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Rachel Blake) pointed out, that is not the way to run any tax system, not even on local government level.”
“Today I stand proud to welcome the Budget, which takes long-term fiscal planning seriously. I welcome a Government who will take us away from the course the previous Government steered, away from austerity, and away from the chaos and confusion of the past few Budgets. First, I want to make a brief point about tax simplification and the confusion across the Chamber in this debate and in the many amendments. The way to reform a tax system is not to argue for various exemptions, reliefs and get-out clauses for different subsectors, but to have a consistent approach to collecting tax applied across the whole economy and then to fund those sectors of the economy, such as healthcare, transport and so on, which we should be funding. That is the approach the Budget has taken.”
“Over and over again on the doorstep I have been told that public services are broken, that crime too often goes unpunished on our high streets, and that mortgage rates, which have shot up wildly over the past few years, are too much of a burden on everyday families. All that creates uncertainty and it is that economic uncertainty that hurts businesses. That is why I welcome, for the first time in many years, a credible Budget that addresses the fundamental problems facing our society. Yes, we have to understand the current fiscal situation in the context of the bad decisions that were made before us. We all know about the tax giveaway mini-Budget under Liz Trust and the perilous effects it had on gilts, pension funds and, of course, mortgages, for which we are all now paying the price.”
“I thank the hon. Member for his intervention and for highlighting the perilous state of GPs in my constituency of Earley and Woodley after 14 years of the previous Government stripping away the NHS. I am very confident in the announcements made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health, which he has made several times in this Chamber, to take all funding decisions in the round. I very much look forward to seeing the quality of GPs improve. I also highlight the funding already announced for increasing the number of practitioners in GP surgeries. I expect to welcome them in my constituency, as well as across the UK. I return to my point about long-term fiscal planning. The hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans) made the point that we need to make choices.”
“I will give way in a moment. I add to that the bad decisions made in the previous two Budgets under the right hon. Member for Godalming and Ash (Jeremy Hunt). Those decisions were not credible. It was not credible, on the March 2024 OBR forecast, that the next Government would do anything about schools, special educational needs and disabilities or the NHS. Those were not credible promises made in the last two Budgets. Those giveaways were made by Governments without a plan; Governments who literally cut and ran by calling an early summer election so they would not have to face the consequences of their bad fiscal choices. They left us with a bill to pay and this Government are now making that possible in a considered way.”
“The funds raised in the Budget allow us to employ over 13,000 additional neighbourhood police officers, police community support officers and special constables by 2029. They will also fund 1,200 new police officers. Introducing the specific offence of assaulting a shop worker and attaching prison time to that offence is backed up by the commitment to put £2.3 billion towards prison builds over the next two years. That is an example of how we are helping small businesses: not just by talking the talk, but by walking the walk fiscally.”
“They know that, because the Chancellor increased the employment allowance from £5,000 to £10,500, ensuring that the rise in employers’ national insurance contributions will not hit the smallest businesses. Those employing four members of staff on the minimum wage will not be hit by the measure. That means that 865,000 employers will not pay any NICs at all next year and over 1 million will pay the same or less than they did previously. The changes have been very much welcomed by the Federation of Small Businesses. The top concern I heard about from those retail businesses is not about NICs, but about shoplifting and crime on our high streets, which all too often goes unpunished.”
“That task requires at least a decade of national renewal. That is why in the Budget we set out credible long-term funding commitments and plans for where the money comes from. On small businesses, I recently spent Small Business Saturday out and about visiting local employers across my constituency of Earley and Woodley. I agree very much that those small businesses are the backbone of our local economy; they bring character and jobs to our high streets. One such shop I visited is called UnderTwoK, a shopfront on Wokingham Road. I asked the owner, Mark, what the Government could do to help small businesses like his. He said: “keep going with the focus on economic stability and clean energy. That’ll bring more people our way.” Small businesses know that the Government are on their side.”