My right hon. Friend is absolutely right: this is about a series of things hitting these businesses. It is about new legislation, new taxes and the withdrawal of reliefs that had been supporting businesses. I am glad my right hon. Friend intervened, because I was in Hornchurch yesterday speaking to staff at Wyndham Hair. Johnpaul, who runs that business, is one of my right hon. Friend’s constituents, and he told me how supportive my right hon. Friend has been of his local high street, so I appreciate the support he is giving me in the debate.

As my right hon. Friend said, this is about a whole range of people sectors. It is not just about salons being hit with these staggering tax bills; it is also about the early years sector. That sector supports many other businesses that require good workers. When I talk to nurseries in my constituency, some of the bills they talk about are just unbelievable. In fact, they are so unbelievable that when I tell people about them, they do not believe it—they think the nurseries must have got their sums wrong, but that is absolutely not true.

One after-school and holiday club provider has seen her annual NICs bill go from £10,851 to £26,040. That is a small business, and it is being absolutely hammered. One nursery provider told me that the combined impact of NICs and the minimum wage is adding £30,000 to her payroll costs every month. Those are unbelievable numbers, which risk driving many nurseries to closure. That will dismantle the support network that allows many other women to go into the workplace.

The minimum wage is right in principle, but when we force a small salon with razor-thin margins to meet that extra cost on top of everything else, it becomes untenable. When we add to that the looming Employment Rights Bill, many salons are telling staff to go self-employed just to survive. That is not giving people more protections but ripping up the ones they already have.

That brings me to apprentices. Salons are letting them go very fast. For decades, this industry has opened doors for young people to learn skills and earn a living, and that ladder is being kicked away. At Coal House Cuts, the owners once proudly trained apprentices; now they cannot afford to. Wyndham Hair used to employ four apprentices; now they have one. The Vanilla Room is getting daily calls from laid-off apprentices, but it too has had to cut learner hours. Its owner, Kerry, told me:

“For the first time in 30 years, we just can’t afford to run apprenticeships. Our costs are up £28,000 on apprenticeships a year. How much does the government think salons make?”

After I put in for this debate, more stories poured in from across the country. This crisis goes beyond hair and beauty, because I am hearing the same from construction firms—another traditional route for working-class youth. Two vital pathways into work for working-class girls and boys are collapsing. Is this the future that Labour promised—a generation of young people priced out of skilled trades because Westminster could not design a Budget with small businesses in mind? That is surely the very opposite of what this Government say they want, and it is utterly incompatible with their drive to get people off welfare. Because beauty salons are facing so many different costs, they are also cutting back on training, in a sector where customers demand that they are up on the latest technologies.

So what will happen? First, there will be job losses and price hikes. One of the challenges for many salons is that their customers face the same economic headwinds, so they are spending less and visiting less often. Then there is the ultimate risk of closures. Every time a salon closes, it leaves more than just an empty unit; it leaves a void in the community—a place of connection, conversation and confidence gone. Speaking to Wyndham Hair yesterday, I heard not only about the services it offers but the support it gave its long-standing clients through covid. Those are the kinds of businesses that these people run. Utopia has clients aged 10 to 97; the 97-year-old goes to the beauty salon because it is her place of sanctuary. When legitimate businesses vanish, they are replaced by shady operations that are often fronts for illegal or exploitative practices. The rest of the high street struggles, apprenticeship routes collapse and tax receipts fall—they will not rise.