Ed Miliband is expected to vow to reverse a planned business rates rise if Labour wins the next election, that would benefit 1.5 million small businesses.
Funds to pay for the cost of the cut will be raised by reversing a planned UK-wide cut in corporation tax for big companies in 2015.
Mr Miliband is expected to make the policy pledge in his keynote speech to his party’s annual conference in Brighton later, the BBC reports.
The Institute of Directors commented that Mr Miliband was “tinkering at the edges”. The Conservatives responded that it was “yet more economic incompetence from the same Labour politicians who got us into a mess”.
Building on his vision of the “One Nation Labour Party”, set out in his conference speech last year, Mr Miliband will push the case for an economy based on higher skills and wages.
Central to this is Mr Miliband’s stated conviction for the “dynamism” of small business and growth in the regions.
