CONSERVATIVE
New Forest East

BUSINESS QUESTION – BUSINESS RATES RELIEF FOR FOOD AND DRINK WHOLESALERS - 17 December 2020

BUSINESS QUESTION – BUSINESS RATES RELIEF FOR FOOD AND DRINK WHOLESALERS - 17 December 2020

Dr Julian Lewis: One level playing field on which we might all agree is the similar treatment of similar businesses in terms of Government support during the Covid emergency, so may we have a statement in the new year, if not sooner, about the plight of food and drink wholesalers who do not get business rates relief, whereas supermarkets do? That seems to me and many others to be inequitable.

[The Leader of the House of Commons  (Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg): My right hon. Friend has raised this point with me before, and it is one that I completely understand and have a degree of sympathy with, though there is a difference with wholesalers between the retailers, and some of them have managed to change their supply customers quite effectively. They also benefit from the other schemes – the furlough scheme, bounce back loans and many other schemes – that the Government have introduced. Although he is right to raise the point, there are things that the Government have done to help that sector.]