Meeting of the Parliament 17 December 2025
I completely agree with my colleague, Craig Hoy. Businesses have cited the hike of 3 per cent in employer national insurance contributions as incredibly challenging, and they are not investing in their workforces as they used to do.
Businesses are dealing with persistent workforce challenges, including skills shortages and the difficulty of recruiting and retaining staff in key sectors such as hospitality, care and tourism. Footfall on the high street has not fully recovered since the pandemic, placing further strain on retailers who are already competing with online giants.
On top of that, as Craig Hoy has said, the national insurance hike has been particularly painful. For years, Scottish businesses have also had to contend with the Scottish National Party’s failure to pass on business rates reliefs that companies elsewhere in the United Kingdom have benefited from. That has left many firms in Scotland at a competitive disadvantage.
Today, I visited an Edinburgh hospitality venue, where I and my colleagues heard about crippling tax rises as a result of the current business rates revaluation. Alongside business groups such as UK Hospitality, the Association of Scotland’s Self-Caterers and the Scottish Hospitality Group, my party is urging the SNP Government to pause the proposed changes to non-domestic rates; we heard the same plea from Fergus Ewing today, too. There has to be a cross-party approach, but the Government urgently needs to review the methodology.
If the rates rises go ahead and businesses see their bills rise dramatically, it could ruin so many small enterprises—and that is not me talking, but people who have written to me with their case studies. Business owners have spoken to me about their anxiety, uncertainty and genuine fear for their futures.