Dan Neidle

But yeah, pausing for a second.

Simply abolishing business rates for pubs is a really bad idea.

You're giving money to landlords.

Don't do it.

But there are other features of business rates that are problematic to tenants.

The biggest one is that the market adjusts quickly, but business rates adjustment is really slow.

And so if your business rates go up overnight, which often happens, that's not reducing your rent.

Yeah, a one year business rate holiday for pubs, for example, is not going to go through into rents, but a permanent one will.

There are better things that could be done that would actually help, like having more regular reviews of business rates.

You don't have this problem of business rates going up when the actual economic value of the property has fallen just because of the time lag between the valuation and the payment.

Yeah, I mean, the French system is mad.

Anyone listening, if you Google John Van Rienen, R-E-E-N-A-N, R-E-N-E-N, and French firm chart, you will see this most astonishing chart showing how you have a large number of French firms up to 50 employees.

And after that, the numbers just plummet because there are so many French rules that...

complicate stroke, punish the lives of businesses with 50 employees.

So drawing lines around small businesses is always a very attractive thing for politicians to do, but it's a very dangerous thing that can do quite serious damage.

I live in Norfolk and hospitality is, I don't know about the major, but a very major employer here.

And I talk to local businesses and people that run them.

And the two biggest complaints are

are the rise in the minimum wage and the rise in employer national insurance.

And it seems to me, if people are complaining about two things and saying two things are the problem, maybe politicians should be thinking about those two things and not about other things.