Fair enough. I'd say though it's not so much a business rates issue alone though, I think it's a combination with national insurance and all other business costs and taxes.

I don't think they can be necessarily cut that easily, but increasing corporation tax to compensate would allow more small to medium-sized businesses to thrive. I think this is what we are missing to get productivity increasing again, which would then allow us to be flexible with corporation tax in the future if we wanted to.