Harrogate Chamber Hustings : Your Questions Answered
What do you know of the challenges that face businesses in Harrogate?
In preparation for the General Election to be held in less than 2 weeks, we hosted a Hustings of our own with 6 of the 7 candidates standing in the Harrogate & District constituency in attendance. This week we will reflect on the questions asked and the answers given.
Phill Holdsworth, Chamber President, and owner of Aurum Gold asked:
What do you know of the challenges that face businesses in Harrogate and how would you address each one? (In the interests of time, candidates were asked to focus on one challenge.)
Conrad Whitcroft (Labour):
I'm going to talk about energy costs. I think that the fact that energy costs have risen substantially, not just for households but for businesses, it's led to so many businesses closing down, having to cut back hours, only open certain days, et cetera. Labour has a really interesting and exciting new plan related to Great British Energy - a publicly owned energy company that will develop clean energy through nuclear, wind and solar power. We're going to reform the planning laws to make it easier to do that. That's going to bring down the average cost and act as a stabiliser against what has been a very turbulent energy market. Crucially and from a moral perspective as well, we're going to stop being reliant on regimes that don't listen to human rights. We're going to stop having to buy gas and oil from the people that we'd rather not do and deal with it locally instead.
Tom Gordon (Lib Dem):
One of the first things that I did after I was selected a year and a half ago was sit down and get to know some key local business owners. Any member of parliament is only as good as a team that they surround themselves with and they need to have their finger on the pulse. If I was elected to be MP, I would have quarterly business briefings and breakfasts with key business owners. The difficulty in recruiting staff is an issue people keep mentioning repeatedly, and there is a whole complex host of reasons why, but it’s down to making sure that we have people who can get here if they can't afford to live here.
Paul Haslam (Independent):
I'd be looking at trying to increase your top line, Phill, and I'd definitely be trying to make the town much more attractive with an integrated public transport system supporting the hotels and supporting the conference centre to bring more people in.
Andrew Jones (Conservative):
I have come into politics from the business community and that includes having been on the board of our convention centre here. The main challenge that I hear when meeting businesses every week is about the difficulty of recruiting and recruiting at a particular level of skills. So, I would focus upon skills development. That means two things for me. Promoting apprenticeships - we've had 12,800 apprenticeship starts in this constituency since 2010 - and also supporting Harrogate College. We helped secure the money for a complete rebuild of Harrogate College, and very shortly they’ll have a completely new campus. It will be focused upon the interests of the future and building partnerships with local businesses, helping them train up their workforces for the future. So, skills will be at the heart of it.
Shan Oakes (Green):
I agree that skills are absolutely fundamental. We need to support our higher education sector and develop it so that it's relevant to the 21st century. Skills on renewable energies is obviously one of those and insulation and so on. There are all sorts of fantastic ideas out there and we need to listen to people.
John Swales (Reform):
Having been a landlord of a property in town and have businesses come and go through it, I think the tax burden on businesses and especially small businesses is the one that cripples them. The key thing for me is for the small business owner to keep more of what they earn, which is remove business rates from small businesses, increase the VAT threshold and remove them lower the level of corporation tax. All those three things will help businesses be more independent and have money to invest in the future.
We would like to thank all candidates for participating in a lively and engaging discussion, and all those who asked such pertinent questions.
Thanks also to John Plummer for facilitating the meeting and Pavilions of Harrogate for hosting.
Written by Zach Greaves - Chamber Press Secretary
