View from the House: Small businesses are to be encouraged

Feb 2 2010 Cheryl Gillan MP for Chesham and Amersham, Buckinghamshire Advertiser

SMALL businesses are vital to our economy. This sector needs encouragement because these businesses are essential to the successful functioning of the whole.

We hope some of them will in time be able to grow into the large companies of the future. Learning to be an entrepreneur can start in the classroom and we need to encourage this spirit throughout the country.

Some of my parliamentary colleagues have been looking at how Britain compares with the rest of the world when it comes to setting them up. For instance, it takes half the time that it does here to set up a new business in Denmark, the US or Hong Kong.

Setting up in business should be a way for people to improve their chances in life, but often this is not possible for people from poorer backgrounds. Tenants of social housing can find that their lease stops them from running a business at home. We need to look at this practice.

We also need to look at the way that we treat small businesses once they are up and running.

Thousands of small businesses are pushed into bankruptcy over small amounts of unpaid taxes. Increasing the statutory threshold over which the government can petition to make a business insolvent would make a difference.

There are other changes, which we have already made part of our policy, which could also help small businesses, like reducing the small company corporation tax rates, making small business rates relief automatic and abolishing the tax on jobs created by new businesses.