This week proved that the crucial issue of business rates is not going to go away for the retail sector nor for the Government as the extortionate costs retailers are facing once again grabbed column inches.

This week proved that the crucial issue of business rates is not going to go away for the retail sector nor for the Government as the extortionate costs retailers are facing once again grabbed column inches.

Big name retailers Morrisons and Boots submitted evidence to the Inquiry into the UK retail sector, led by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills Select Committee, which called for a reform of the rates system.

Followed by British Retail Consortium director general Helen Dickinson who told the Inquiry that the rates system should be overhauled.

On the same day MP for Rochdale Simon Danczuk led a Westminster debate accusing the Government of using the high street as a “cash cow to milk to exhaustion” for their business rates.

And leading think tank, the Policy Exchange, called for the Government to freeze business rates for two years to help ease the pressure on a high street that is trying to adapt to a transformed landscape.

Meanwhile, vacancy rates for April have reached a record high

With so much noise being made about the high costs it is hard to see how the Government can ignore it.

But it seems they are continuing to try. There was no sign of minister for the high street Mark Prisk in the high street debate on Tuesday. Instead, planning minister Nick Boles took the defence against Danczuk’s well-structured argument to reform the rates system and produce a fairer property tax on retailers.

Boles admitted the rates system may need to be changed in the medium term but dismissed the problem. He said: “The business rates system is simple. A single amount is raised that is uprated every year by inflation, but by no more, and the increase in a business rate on one business has to be matched by the decrease elsewhere on another business, because the total contribution to the Exchequer is the same and simply increases by inflation.

“Although business rates will need to be taken into account with regard to the changes that we have been talking about there has been no shift under this Government that might explain the problems faced by our high streets.”

But Boles is missing the point. Business rates have increased sharply over the past three years, charging retailers more than £500m extra in rates. This means businesses are unable to invest or open new stores and create new jobs.

Meanwhile, they are calculated simply against September’s retail price index, causing uncertainty in the sector. Morrisons, Alliance Boots and the BRC are amongst a wave of retailers and industry bodies that believe a fairer system could be based on the annualised inflation rate of the consumer price index.

The current system is unfair and outdated and just as retailers have had to adapt to a retail environment that has been transformed by the online world. The Government must listen to the retail sector, the largest private sector employer in the UK, in order to ensure the economy can recover or face an even slower revival.