Steph McGovern

Because...

Isn't it in the landlord's interest to fill those units and actually have some income coming in?

But if it doesn't change how much the costs are for a business, they're not going to be able to sustain the costs.

So it's a lose-lose then for the landlords, isn't it?

But that just feels like deeply unfair.

Can't you bring in a rule which says you can't, landlords can't put up their rent if business rates come down?

Like, can't you legislate for that?

For example, one of the units I've got up here, we have, our business rates have gone up quite dramatically with the changes.

If they came down and then the landlord said, we're going to put the rent up, we'll go, we'll stuff you, we'll move somewhere else.

Or our business just wouldn't be able to make money.

Dan, I'm going to ask you to sit tight for a couple of minutes while we go to a quick break.

So as a person with a small business, can I just ask then, if you, so as things stand, the costs in our business have gone up about 26% when you look at all the different elements of employer and national insurance contributions, minimum wage rises because we employ lots of people who are young.

with business rates, with rents going up, with energy and everything else, it means that things are a lot tougher and the margins are a lot smaller.

And we are now considering closing some of our bigger units, even though they're profit making.

So how do you help?

And that's going to mean potentially jobs being lost there.

So how can you help small businesses at this point and not leave businesses like mine that are making money from deciding to bail from it all because it's just not worth it anymore?

No thoughts, Dan.

And then all those people out there who are absolutely grafting, who are, you know, doing 12, 14, 16 hour days to run their businesses, which eventually might become bigger ones, but you've all got to start somewhere.

What do they just give up?