Business

Policy: Encourage new small businesses to lease empty shops by offering them a 2-year rates relief holiday.

Explanation: Small businesses are hugely important to both our economy and our society and culture. Empty shops make streets feel depressing, and make it harder for the remaining shops to survive. We support getting empty retail units busy again, contributing to bustling, energetic communities, with more local work and economic activity. This is a way to encourage small businesses and support them as they are starting out.

Policy: Increase the VAT threshold for small businesses from £90,000 to £300,000.

Explanation: This would incentivise small one-man-band & family businesses to grow and will level the playing field for small businesses with multinationals who enjoy economies of scale and greater purchasing power.

People-Centred Trade:

EDINBURGHPEOPLE members who are standing in the election this year would support people-centred trade. This means:

Speaking up against UPOV91 seed patenting laws. These are included in several UK trade deals and mean that smallholder farmers across the world can’t save, sell or trade their own seeds.

Fighting for the rights of the people who make clothes (backing the Fashion Watchdog campaign).

Supporting a new business and human rights law to hold UK companies accountable for the abuses in their supply chains.

VOTE for

Edinburgh North & Leith: Caroline Waterloo

Edinburgh East & Musselburgh: Jane Gould

Edinburgh South: Mark Rowbotham

Edinburgh South West: Marc Wilkinson

Edinburgh West: Nick Hornig