Andy Burnham’s new business rates adviser has previously called for up to £9bn of tax cuts for businesses, arguing the levy had become an “increasingly excessive burden” on firms.

Jerry Schurder, who was appointed this week to lead an independent review of the business rates system for pubs and hotels, made the case in a 2019 written submission to the Treasury select committee, at a time when he was head of business rates at property consultancy Gerald Eve.

In the submission, made as part of the committee’s inquiry into the impact of business rates on business, Mr Schurder argued that the business rates multiplier, the figure used to calculate a company’s property tax bill, should be reduced by around a third for all companies.

He admitted that a cut of such a “magnitude” would have cost the Treasury between £8bn and £9bn a year, but said the change was needed to fix a tax system that had “become out of kilter since 1990”.

“Businesses are more understanding of the need to pay taxes when they operate successfully, but feel aggrieved that they have to pay significant business rates at the outset of their ownership or occupation of property, sometimes before they have even opened for trade, let alone made a profit,” he told MPs.

Mr Schurder suggested the policy could be paid for through tax rises elsewhere. That included charging business rates on agricultural land and buildings, which he said could raise around £450m a year, with the remaining gap filled through new taxes, including the Digital Services Tax that the Conservatives went on to introduce a year later.

The submission gives an insight into the ideas Mr Schurder may recommend in his new role. He will report to the Prime Minister next March, ahead of the next business rates revaluation in 2029, and Mr Burnham has vowed to support high street businesses, which faced a sharp rise in their property tax bills at the last revaluation.

Mr Schurder has spent decades arguing for reform. In a LinkedIn post this summer announcing his retirement from Gerald Eve after 46 years, he said he had broken a promise to himself not to retire until business rates had been “fundamentally reformed”, adding that the system was in a “far poorer state” than when he first began advocating change.

Any proposal for a steep reduction in business rates would raise fresh questions about how Mr Burnham pays for a growing list of tax and spending commitments. The Prime Minister has been accused of making unfunded promises after vowing to remove VAT from household electricity bills, a policy he said would be covered by savings from the scrapped digital ID scheme. Darren Jones, a former chief secretary to Sir Keir Starmer, countered that the digital ID scheme was itself unfunded.

Mr Burnham has already moved on the sector once. Last month he announced a 20 per cent business rates cut for pubs, clubs and live music venues, a £100m a year package covering around 32,000 venues from April 2027 and worth roughly £1,100 to a typical pub, funded through higher charges on vape shops and tougher VAT enforcement against online sellers. That announcement followed signals from ministers that a U-turn on the planned pub business rates hike was on the way.

The pressure on the review to go further is already building. Hotel and holiday park bosses have urged the Chancellor to extend business rates relief beyond pubs, while nightlife leaders have warned that support confined to pubs would leave the night time economy exposed.

The Digital Services Tax, which Mr Schurder advocated raising to pay for high street relief, brought in around £1bn for the Exchequer last year. It has, however, become a source of tension with the US, with Donald Trump repeatedly attacking levies on American technology companies and pressing Britain to scrap the tax.

The Treasury was approached for comment.