Repairing the Grade I-listed Houses of Parliament could take up to 40 years and £7bn of taxpayers’ money if MPs can’t be moved elsewhere.
The cheapest option, moving everybody out to a temporary location for around six years, will cost just £3.5bn.
The easy option, leaving Parliament at Westminster, could mean SMEs footing much of the bill through inflated business rates or corporation tax.
An unconsidered option could be creating a whole new building at a fraction of the cost (bearing in mind the Scottish Parliament building cost a comparatively less eye-watering £414m), elsewhere in the country, creating work and freeing up prime commercial space in London, though this looks unlikely.
Isla Wilson is director of business growth consultancy Ruby Star Associates. She adds:
The SMEs that we work with tell us that they feel fairly remote from the way in which business is discussed politically.
The reality is that starting and growing a small business can be isolating and tough, and too often it can seem that the political focus is on high-growth superstars and high-investment businesses rather than some of the more immediate hurdles faced in the early stages.
Hearing politicians’ take on business from within the Westminster bubble can increase the sense that they are talking about other businesses, but not yours. For example, if you operate in an area with endemic skill-shortage issues, the endless missives about the need to create jobs can feel out-of-touch and unhelpful.
Perhaps a move (even a temporary one) away from Westminster could act as a mini-catalyst for some real dialogue between SMEs and MPs.
A business in Westminster will have a totally different take on a proposed move from an SME in Leeds or Manchester, as would an SME based in a rural area, where the challenges can be very different to those faced by businesses operating in cities.
There were cries of tokenism when the BBC moved to MediaCity in Salford, but the Salford-based media businesses we talk to now feel part of a genuine and buzzing media stronghold in the north. This could create the political equivalent.
Moving our MPs further afield would hopefully have the effect of making them less insular, and more likely to see the challenges that facing SMEs outside of that one small, affluent pocket of the capital that they inhabit. This could provide a chance for MPs to truly connect with the SMEs that they all claim to champion, and depending on the location chosen, potentially expose them to a far wider variety of business types and structures.
Almost anywhere they moved to could provide them with a much closer link to the UK’s many rural businesses, and, while it’s unlikely that they would relocate to an area that doesn’t have superfast broadband, they may at least run the risk of running into some of the many entrepreneurs who fight that particular battle themselves.
Outside of the capital, in fact even just outside of Westminster itself, small businesses are suffering because of substandard transport links, lack of infrastructure, patchy availability of funded support, lack of access to a skilled workforce and crippling business rates and borrowing costs. As a new, growing business, based in Dorset, you probably feel the impact of many of these issues.
While there may be some very temporary disruption during the move itself, MPs once removed from the protection of the Westminster bubble, may develop an increased understanding of exactly the type of business you operate and how government can support your future growth. In my view, it’s hard to see a downside for most small businesses from this move.
The current approach to supporting businesses can feel quite “paint by numbers” and no amount of lobbying can truly replace a better real-world understanding from MPs of what it means to strive, thrive and survive as an entrepreneur in the UK.
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