Clause 7
Finance Bill
2:30 pm
Philip Hammond (Shadow Chief Secretary To the Treasury, Treasury; Runnymede and Weybridge, Conservative)
As the Financial Secretary has touched on the number of small company incorporations and quoted it again, may I ask again a question which I asked her, or perhaps it was her colleague, during a debate in the House a couple of weeks ago and which was not answered then? Yes, the number of incorporations has increased, largely driven by tax incentives to incorporate, but is not the figure about which she should be concerned the fall in the number of companies reaching £1 million turnover within three years? So we have more companies and more lifestyle businesses being incorporated—whether that is a good thing is not an issue. The key thing is that we are not getting them to that critical £1 million turnover level from which they can grow and become generators of employment and real wealth in the economy.