Party Conference season is all about trying to land simple messages about the future. Whether the Prime Minister achieved this in his speech this week is up to you to decide, but for us, this time of year is a great opportunity to get MPs thinking about ways to support convenience stores, and right now what our members need is the ability to invest.
As I come back from the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool, I was very encouraged by the traction we are getting as an organisation, and the way our members’ voices are getting heard. We spoke to lots of MPs who had seen and thought about our Local Shop Report and particularly out constituency briefings that being our data down to a local level.
The big set piece for me was speaking at The Enterprise Forum’s reception, alongside some other business groups, Chief Secretary to the Treasury James Murray and the TUC’s General Secretary Paul Nowak. I made two key points that I hope landed:
- ACS and the other trade bodies in the room were there as representatives not only of shops, businesspeople, armed with data on jobs, investment, sales and GVA, but as representatives of the experience of risking your house to start and grow and business, create jobs and growth, and provide vital services to the community. We hear a lot about “working people”, well there’s no group that fits that description better than entrepreneurs in sectors like ours.
- The government must press ahead with reforms to business rates to make this complex and outdated tax work in the modern world. The system needs to incentivise investment, promote service provision and help businesses to survive and thrive.
The Prime Minister and Chancellor set out in their speeches to conference a road ahead to the next election, with more tough choices to make, growth hard to come by and public spending continuing to be squeezed. You’ll have your own views on that and on wider political issues. I think that business rates reform would be one of the first tangible signs that when the government talks about governing in the service of working people, they see entrepreneurs are part of that group.
