Removing business rates for 250,000 hospitality and leisure businesses, reforming IR35 and making it easier to open bank accounts are among new pledges for small businesses from the Conservatives.
Speaking at the party’s annual conference in Manchester, shadow business secretary Andrew Griffith announced measures that he said would “champion wealth creators and risk takers”, as well as “create a new generation of entrepreneurs”.
In power, Griffith said the Tories would look to reform off payroll working rules, known as IR35, which aims to close a loophole allowing workers to pay less tax by setting up a limited company than they would if they were employed.
“If Britain is to have ladders of opportunity, then the self-employed need to be able to climb them”, Griffith said.
IR35 was repealed in the Tories’ controversial mini-Budget in 2022, but the decision was reversed when Jeremy Hunt replaced Kwasi Kwarteng as chancellor a few weeks later.
Griffith also said the Conservatives will make it easier for small businesses to open bank accounts.
“Opening a bank account today is so hard it is a miracle anyone starts a business at all,” he said. “It can take weeks or even months to do what other countries do in minutes.
“It shows just how far our regulators have lost the plot and it’s a brake on growth we cannot afford. So, we will transform a process which makes banks treat you as guilty until proven innocent.”
Other pledges from Griffith were reversing Labour’s Employment Rights Bill, introducing a permanent 100% business rates relief for retail, hospitality, and leisure firms, which he said will benefit 250,000 businesses, and rolling out young entrepreneur schemes to more schools and colleges.
Griffith said the Conservatives “know that it is only private enterprise that creates growth, not government”, but acknowledged “there were moments in office where we strayed from that truth”.
He concluded by saying the Tories are “the party of enterprise, the party of the entrepreneur, the party of business. On the side of the pub landlord, the restaurateur, the small business owner, the self-employed, and the family business. Those who work for themselves and give work to others”.