UNLOCKING growth in Central Devon should be the Government’s top priority – sadly its still not properly arrived.

As the Member of Parliament for Central Devon, I am always acutely aware of the important role our small local businesses have in our communities. They knit our towns and rural villages together and sustain generations of livelihoods in our enviable rural setting.

However, since the Autumn Budget, many of the same pressures our businesses faced following the pandemic have begun to return.

Rising inflation may sound like a broad economic term, but we all know how its corrosive impact feels in our day-to-day lives.

However, it’s not the fault of our local businesses that their prices may continue to go up.

The cost of each employee has on average spiralled by over £900 courtesy of Rachel Reeves’ National Insurance increase – unfortunately pay checks will see none of this additional cost.

Inflation has been propped up by £70 billion of unplanned public spending on union pay deals and departmental budgets– crucially without any measures to boost public sector productivity.

Wasteful public spending has consequences – the revised Bank of England inflation forecast expects inflation to return to 3.7 per cent in the summer – precisely the opposite direction that our local economy, which benefits enormously from seasonal trades needs.

Businesses should be planning for summer trade, instead many have been forced to revise their investment plans in light of the Chancellor’s reckless discretionary decisions.

We have so many excellent hospitality and leisure businesses that should be gearing up to make the most of the changing weather, Government should get out of their way, not burdening them with extra taxes, regulation and inflationary pressures.

Here in Central Devon, as felt across the country, energy prices are yet again experiencing inflationary pressure which I know is a major concern to many commercial bill payers, unprotected by the price cap.

We have some of the highest energy costs in Europe, and, regrettably, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband is determined to only make this worse.

One of the reasons for this is the enormous subsidies we pay windfarms to turn their turbines off, and the failure over many years to replace our coal power stations with nuclear alternatives.

Our last government took meaningful steps to rectify this at Sizewell, Hinckley Point and with the Small Modular Reactor programme.

However, it is abundantly clear that our Energy Secretary is more interested in ploughing evermore bill payers' cash into various initiatives, including blanketing over farmland with expensive solar farms than actually driving down energy prices.

We cannot simply spend our way out of this problem. What we need now is a clear and credible plan to unlock the growth in the economy and boost productivity, and in turn combatting inflation while boosting living standards, real wages, and innovation.

We should be removing barriers to innovation, such as the National Insurance increases and properly pursuing cheaper reliable energy.