Herald Express: What business leaders are telling me they want from the Budget

Despite still being over a month away, speculation about the Budget and its contents are already in full swing.  

Typically, this speculation is dominated by business leaders from various sectors advocating for tax changes or tweaks to fiscal policy that benefit their specific industry.  

This year, though, is different. 

From every corner of the economy, the message businesses are sending the government is the same: please do no more harm.  

What a devastating message to receive for a party that expended so much time and effort courting business while in opposition, casting themselves as the steady hand versus the turbulence of the Conservatives.  

It sounds almost laughable now, but last May Keir Starmer even said Labour was ‘the party of business’. That identity swiftly began to crumble this time last year when the Chancellor delivered a Budget that pushed up taxes by £40bn in the name of rebuilding public services.  

Fast forward a year and public services are, in some cases, worse than ever – research commissioned by the Lib Dems found that 2025 is set to have the highest number of GP waits longer than 2-4 weeks since figures were first collected – and many businesses are already at the precipice of financial jeopardy or have sadly already tipped over the edge.  

Now, businesses are facing a Budget in just over a month where taxes are expected to rise again. Last autumn, the Chancellor promised the tax rises of 2024 were a ‘one-off’, needed to ‘wipe the slate clean’ of the public finance ‘hole’ she inherited. Thanks in part to Labour’s economic mismanagement she has had to backtrack on these words.  

The Chancellor even began to cite Brexit as a reason for the economic quandary she finds herself in. While us Liberal Democrats, of course, agree with this assessment, it is frankly galling to suddenly blame Brexit after Labour spent years silently watching it wreak so much damage to our businesses and economy.  

If the Chancellor truly believes what she says, she must turn her words into action and negotiate an ambitious bespoke new UK-EU customs union, which cuts red tape and unleashes trade with our European neighbours. 

One sector I will be pressing the Government to offer some relief to in the upcoming Budget is hospitality. As MP for South Devon and Vice-Chair of the APPG for Hospitality and Tourism, I am committed to standing up for an often overlooked industry that bore the brunt of last year’s tax hikes.  

More than 1,100 pubs and restaurants have closed since last autumn, and job losses in the sector could top 110,000 by the time the Chancellor delivers her next Budget. The hike in employer National Insurance (NI) attracted the headlines last October, but the drop in the threshold in which NI kicks in from £9.1k to £5k has had arguably a bigger impact, especially for seasonal workers.  

The Liberal Democrats recognise this and that is why at our recent party conference we passed a slew of motions urging better protections for our hospitality industry.  

Included within this was a call to exempt hospitality SMEs from the Employer NIC increase, as well as correcting business rate anomalies and launching a consultation on a new NIC band to help support part-time staff.  

Hospitality is the fabric of social life in the UK and is integral to community building and imbuing an area with a feel-good factor that stimulates economic growth. It must be protected, and I will continue doing everything I can to ensure the Chancellor listens. 

If you wish to contact me about this, or any other issue you are facing, please email me at: caroline.voaden.mp@parliament.uk.  

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