specialist support by the UK Export Academy – which helped more than 11,000 businesses sell internationally last financial year alone – to a new Export Support Directory, a digital platform that connects British businesses with vetted commercial suppliers; to help with tax advice, legal expertise, market research, and more. We also believe in the importance of championing the UK’s small businesses and our Board of Trade has been revamped as a formidable group of advocates and ambassadors to champion UK businesses, especially SMEs, to trade more and grow. We know that, in today’s business landscape, it can often feel like a lot is stacked against family businesses. So, through cracking down on late payments, including with a new Fair Payment Code, through redrawing government procurement processes to give small businesses opportunities to win valuable public sector contracts, and through streamlining government support through a new
Business Growth Service, we are determined to do more to support family firms. Finally, by freezing the small business multiplier to protect 90% of properties from inflationary increases in business rate liabilities, permanently lowering business rates for retail, hospitality and leisure properties from 2026/27, and increasing the Employment Allowance from £5,000 to £10,500, and removing the £100,000 threshold, we are looking to ease the financial pressures you face. All together, we are making sure the support you need is there, when you need it. Just like family businesses are there to support and serve your local communities, we are determined to be there to support and serve you. Through these changes, we are paving the way for further regeneration and growth, and I look forward to working with you all on the path ahead.
Andrew Griffith Shadow Secretary of State for Business and Trade
Family businesses, and the millions of people they employ across the UK, are key to driving the growth to which this Government professes to aspire. They are the backbone of the economy. It is in the country’s interests to support them. So as Shadow Secretary of State for Business, I ask why are the Government dogmatically pursuing policies which seem laser-focused on doing the exact opposite of fostering prosperity? Anyone who has any grasp of how business works would realise the Government’s changes to Business Property Relief, NI contributions and the Employment Rights Bill are politically motivated changes that will render British businesses uncompetitive with foreign ones. These changes especially provide business owners with a good incentive to wind down. But Ministers do not seem to know or care about the knock-on effects of their policies. After 25 years in business, which included helping grow businesses that employed tens of thousands of people, I know what many in Westminster don’t: it is business that
creates growth, jobs and opportunity; it is entrepreneurs who create wealth and prosperity; and it is those who take risks who reap the rewards.
At present, the Government is reaping the whirlwind it has sown by attacking these groups – but it is all of us who will suffer. The better news is that, in my view, we Conservatives can fix this. We know how to, and in Kemi Badenoch we have a leader with business experience who completely understands the need. My own mentor and the inspiration for me to go into politics after a decades-long career in business, Lord Young, understood this and is most famous for his time as Secretary of State for Enterprise.
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