Part of Business and Trade – in the House of Commons at on 13 March 2025.
Greg Smith
Shadow Parliamentary Under Secretary (Business and Trade), Opposition Whip (Commons)
Yesterday, the owner of the hugely popular Rumsey’s, which is celebrating 21 years on Wendover high street in my Constituency, emailed me to say:
“We estimate the changes coming in April will add 15% to our staff costs that we simply don’t have. Therefore we have had to sadly make redundancies, put in a recruitment freeze and implement staff hour cuts to offset this.”
With real-world testimony like that replicated up and down the country, will the Minister finally acknowledge that an urgent change of course is needed to support high streets, scrap the employer NI rise, save jobs and protect communities?
Ministers make up the Government and almost all are members of the House of Lords or the House of Commons. There are three main types of Minister. Departmental Ministers are in charge of Government Departments. The Government is divided into different Departments which have responsibilities for different areas. For example the Treasury is in charge of Government spending. Departmental Ministers in the Cabinet are generally called 'Secretary of State' but some have special titles such as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Ministers of State and Junior Ministers assist the ministers in charge of the department. They normally have responsibility for a particular area within the department and are sometimes given a title that reflects this - for example Minister of Transport.
In a general election, each Constituency chooses an MP to represent them. MPs have a responsibility to represnt the views of the Constituency in the House of Commons. There are 650 Constituencies, and thus 650 MPs. A citizen of a Constituency is known as a Constituent
