🗣️ Speeches and Debates
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My Lords, many SMEs and start-up businesses are facing a challenging time, not just because of high taxation but because they are heavily regulated as well. To open a bank account can take as much as three months, registering VAT takes time and a contract with a lawyer could be as much as 60 pages. Can the Minister give us an assurance that the Government will look into all this? We should...
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My Lords, we as a country are heavily legislated for small companies. We see a large number of UK companies leaving the London Stock Exchange for New York, and a large number of people leaving the country for good. We do not celebrate wealth creation any more. To further burden small companies that create wealth and jobs for our country will be a bit too much. Can we look at watering down...
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My Lords, we are a highly regulated and highly taxed country; that has a big impact on SMEs. On regulation, to appoint a lawyer can take as much as two months, to open a bank account takes three months and even to register for VAT can take weeks. This NIC increase is very much an employment tax: on every person employed, you have to pay 15% NIC. Could the Minister please tell us what they...
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My Lords, no other country in the world taxes companies to employ people. We do that through our national insurance contributions, which are now going up from 13.8% to 15%. That will hit all our SMEs hard, which are the backbone of our economy. What will the Government do to support our SMEs to compensate for this additional cost—this evil tax—that we are talking about?
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My Lords—
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Steps being taken to to raise awareness among UK businesses of commercial opportunities in African markets, and support UK exports to Africa – Lord Popat. Short debate
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Supporting exports and raising awareness among UK businesses of commercial opportunities in African markets – Lord Popat. Short debate
More of Lord Popat's speeches and debates
✍️ Written Questions and Answers
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To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they will take to ensure that requests to expedite decision-making by coroners on religious grounds are implemented, following the judgment of the Administrative Court in R (Adath Yisroel Burial Society) v Senior Coroner for Inner North London (2018 EWHC 969 (Admin).
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British visitors can worship at Anglican and Catholic Churches in Brunei. The former Senior Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Rt Hon Baroness Warsi, attended an Easter Sunday service at St Andrew’s Church on 20 April. There are no synagogues but private worship is permitted. Brunei’s constitution protects religious freedom. In practice though, restrictions are...
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We have concerns about all restrictions placed on freedom of religion and belief in China. This includes the destruction of churches and the removal of crosses from others. We believe that freedom of thought, conscience and religion is a fundamental human right, and continue to raise our concerns with Chinese counterparts. We raised our particular concerns about religious buildings in China...
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The Government does not record information on how many times the Council has chosen not to adopt an item as an “A” point following a preparatory meeting of The Committee of Permanent Representatives (COREPER). Where an item is on the agenda for a meeting of the Council of the European Union, COREPER will prepare that item but will not itself take any decision: the decision is for the...
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The Government has taken a number of recent initiatives to maximise Britain’s soft power, as detailed in our response to the House of Lords Select Committee on Soft Power and the UK's Influence Report of session 2013-14 (Command Paper Cm 8879 of June 2014). We have increased the 2015-16 budget for the Chevening Scholarship Programme from £18.24m to £45m and trebled the number of places...
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The Government is playing a key role in supporting and strengthening the international movement to end female genital mutilation (FGM) worldwide, within a generation. Given that the vast majority of communities who practise FGM are found in 29 countries clustered in West Africa, Egypt, Sudan and the Horn of Africa and that change must come from within affected communities, we have sought to...
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We monitor closely the implementation of One Country, Two Systems, as enshrined in the Sino-British Joint Declaration and the Basic Law. We discuss issues relating to Hong Kong regularly at senior levels with the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) Government and with the Chinese authorities. As the former Foreign Secretary noted in the most recent Six Monthly Report to Parliament,...
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Indonesia has a strong tradition of religious diversity and tolerance and in general those of minority faiths in Indonesia, including any British visitors, are able to practise their religion. Various denominations of Christian churches are well represented across Indonesia. The Jewish community in Indonesia is very small, although there is at least one working synagogue. However, we are...
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