Look after our own

demanded a new levy aimed at online stores to offset business rates.

Launched on Monday, the Mail’s campaign calls for an overhaul on taxes to ensure that online giants do not get preferential treatment over traditional retailers. It has already received the backing of a string of major stores. Business rates – based on the value of the property a firm is based in – have become a toxic issue for retailers. Stores complain they are penalised for having town centre properties, while online retailers that make millions more in sales are charged a fraction of the amount because they can rely on vast out-of-town warehouses.

Bricks and mortar retailers are saddled with a rates bill of £7.2billion a year, while online rivals such as Amazon pay £457million between them. Former Tory minister Nicky Morgan, chairman of the Commons Treasury select committee, wrote to the Chancellor last month urging a review of business rates. Her committee is planning an investigation into the tax later this year. In a letter in response, published yesterday, Mr Hammond said a 2016 review had concluded that rates should not be axed. He also said another inquiry into how to tax digital firms was under way, adding: ‘It is right that we make further progress on this issue before considering the implications for the wider tax system, including business taxes, so that all businesses make a fair contribution to the public finances.’

However, former Wickes boss Mr Grimsey, who called for an end to business rates in a report published this week, said: ‘This is totally dispiriting for independent high street retailers, and it shows a total lack of understanding of the economic challenges that entrepreneurs face. It’s completely divorced from reality, it’s just ignorance, and sounds like someone speaking from behind the comfort of a desk.’ Mike Cherry, of the Federation of Small Business, said the Chancellor should ‘level the playing field’ by using tax revenues from internet giants to remove

hard-working small firms from the business rates system.

James Lowman, of the Association of Convenience Stores, said the ‘time for warm words has long passed’. Dan Simms, of property business Colliers International, added: ‘If you lost 50,000 jobs in the steel industry there would be a march on Whitehall. But because it’s a few jobs lost here and a few jobs there, the Government is happy to just let the industry bleed out.’

The Mail’s campaign, which also calls for cheaper car park fees, has been backed by the bosses of some of Britain’s biggest businesses, including Marks and Spencer and the John Lewis Partnership.

euan Sutherland, chief executive of fashion firm Superdry, said: ‘We’re very supportive of the campaign. Anything we can do to give a clear environment for retailers to prosper has to be a good thing.’ John Bason, finance director of Associated British Foods, which owns Primark, said: ‘If we want a thriving high street we’ve got to make sure we don’t overburden the high street with cost.’ Yesterday Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable pleaded for a re-think, adding: ‘The Treasury shouldn’t be able to bottle out of this.’ And Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg added: ‘Rates now seem to do more damage – especially to high street retailers – than the revenues they raise, so reform is required.’ A Treasury spokesman said more than £10billion of business rate support has helped retailers across the country, but an expert panel will be set up to ‘diagnose the issues affecting the health of our high streets’.

Internet shopping giants should pay a 1 per cent sales tax to ease the business rates burden on high street stores, a major retail group has said. The New West end Company, which represents business in London’s premier shopping district including Selfridges, said it would raise £5billion a year which could be used to make average cuts in business rates of 17.5 per cent.

WITH many millions of elderly people living isolated lives, no one doubts there is a problem with loneliness in Britain.

That said, the Mail has little time for the fatuous suggestion made by the ludicrously-titled minister for loneliness Tracey Crouch to require every government policy to undergo a ‘loneliness test’.

This would only add yet more pointless bureaucracy to the existing mountain of Whitehall red tape, and make for perverse policy-making.

No, if this government was acting on true Tory principles, it would be offering tax breaks to families to encourage them to look after their own. THE Mail welcomes the announcement that existing grammars will be handed £50million to help them to expand, creating up to 5,000 more places for some of the best schools in the country. But what a desperate shame that – without a Tory majority in Parliament – the money can’t be used to pay for new grammars in some of Britain’s most deprived communities, thereby offering a ladder up to bright working- class children and improving social mobility.