Commercial property on our high streets is owned, in the main, by foreign investment firms that treat it as an asset.

In many cases you can’t find out who the owner is. There’s too many shell companies involved.

These firms don’t care about occupancy, they care about the resale book value.

Business tax rates are based on those property valuations.

There’s no chance the property companies will reduce the value of their portfolio to reduce burden for tenants they don’t care about.

Then you have foreign online retailers like Amazon and Temu able to use complex multinational tax avoidance schemes and fake products to undercut the high street.

How can you compete if Amazon can deliver a knock off from China, that you can’t legally sell, faster than you can stock a real one into the shop, and at half the price?