This petition asked people to press the then Conservative government to do more for small businesses, and to abolish business rates.
After the economy was crashed into recession, a lot of small firms across London and the rest of the country closed. Small and medium-sized firms are the bulk of the economy: in 2023 they were 99.9% of the business population, about 5.6 million businesses.
Labour’s pledge at the time was to scrap the business-rates system and replace it with something fairer for shops and other premises, described as the biggest overhaul of business taxation in a generation. The Conservatives had not matched that.
Mike Cherry, then chair of the Federation of Small Businesses, called business rates a regressive tax and said Labour’s proposal was what a pro-small-business tax policy looked like.
I founded and chair SME4Labour so that small, medium, micro, owner-run and family businesses have a voice in politics. I arrived here as a Kurdish refugee, started in kitchens washing dishes, and later opened a chain of places to eat in south London. The petition was about not leaving those businesses behind.