“It costs me £48 just to open my door, and £48 for every hour I remain open after the first one.”

Marcus Kittridge - the owner of award-winning café Baristocats in Commercial Road has had to cut the hours he opens because of the huge increase in costs he is facing – meaning his staff are working fewer hours.

And he told Labour’s Shadow Minister for Business and Consumers, Seema Malhotra, he could see his business, and many others like it, going under if things didn’t change.

On a visit to Swindon, Ms Malhotra heard about the massive hike in energy bills faced by Mr Kittridge who said: “My energy bills have gone up by 403 per cent, and I had to lock into a three-year contract to even get that deal.

“We’ve had to cut the hours we open, we used to be open from 7.30am to 5pm, and now we close at 2pm.

"It costs me £48 just to open the door, and that’s my fixed costs every hour, and I know from footfall when we are making money - if you can’t make that much in an hour, it’s not worth saying open.

“So, we’re all working shorter hours.”

Swindon Advertiser:

Mr Kittridge told the MP for Feltham & Heston, accompanied by Labour’s South Swindon candidate Heidi Alexander, about other pressures such as a threshold for VAT at £85,000, which then sees a business earning a penny over that paying VAT on its entire earnings.

He said: “If things don’t improve, if there isn’t support, I can see in five or ten years' time, business like this will be gone.

“And businesses like this one add so much value to an area – we have collaborations with artists but also with other businesses.

“If bricks and mortar businesses are [not] supported, the town will become desolate.”

Ms Malhotra said her party had plans to help businesses in the long and short term.

She said: “We’ve called for a freeze on business rates to help, and also some of our plans to help businesses be greener and more energy efficient would help in the short term.

“And a Labour government would have a review of business taxation - our system of taxation hasn’t kept pace with changes in our economy, so that needs reform to level the playing field between online businesses and offline.

“We also would do more to support families, because they are the customers for small businesses and small businesses are the backbone of the economy – it all needs look at together as one piece.”