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Madam Speaker: Have hon. Members finished with their points of order? Good.
It is custom and practice that the Opposition Front Bench is reserved for the official Opposition, and I shall see that that is maintained. It is also custom and practice that the area below the Gangway is for the minority parties. I shall look at all the points of order that have been put to me this morning, but I have never known grown-up people to behave--[Interruption.] I want my voice to be recorded. I have never known grown-up people to behave in such a crass and childish manner. I think that it is time that Members of this House grew up. If they do not, I shall want to see the leaders of the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties very soon.
I hope that those Members now on the Opposition Front Bench who are not members of the official Opposition will do me the courtesy of removing themselves right now while I am on my feet. [Hon. Members: "Hear, hear."]
I am taking no further points of order. We have business in this House, and I hope that hon. Members will resolve this in the next hour and behave in a more adult fashion. I am ashamed of this morning's proceedings.
Mr. Phil Willis (Harrogate and Knaresborough):
On a point of order, Madam Speaker.
Madam Speaker:
Is it on another matter?
Madam Speaker:
No, it cannot be on the same matter. I have made my ruling.
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.--[Mr. Betts.]
Mr. Archy Kirkwood (Roxburgh and Berwickshire):
May I take the House back to the less contentious issue of high street shops? I am grateful to the Minister for Small Firms, Trade and Industry for coming to the House to spend some time on these important matters. The issue may not be highly charged politically--and I do not want to make a highly charged party political speech of any kind--but it is important, early in the new Parliament, to recognise that there are problems facing small family retail businesses, particularly in the high street, throughout the United Kingdom. It is also an appropriate day to raise the matter, because the Budget may have significant ramifications and consequences for small retail businesses. The Minister has time to nip across the street before lunch and insert the odd paragraph in the Chancellor's speech. The importance of the financial or economic context in which small retail businesses must survive should be recognised.
At the time of the election, going around my constituency in south-east Scotland, I was struck by the number of people who were concerned about the blight that they felt was beginning to affect some high streets. They spoke of the acute need for support for the built environment throughout the nation. When I made further inquiries, I was surprised to find that that feeling existed not just in south-east Scotland, but throughout the country.
The Government said in their election manifesto that they were anxious to give small businesses a major role, and I hope that the Minister will recognise that retail shops are an important part of the small business sector. I am not talking about rural or village shops, or post offices; their needs were addressed in the previous Parliament. Nor am I thinking of shops in small towns. In the previous Parliament, the Select Committee on Trade and Industry produced a valuable report on larger conurbations; we await the Government's response, which I hope will be positive and will give succour to small retail shops. I am more concerned about small communities--market towns such as eight or nine in my constituency, including Hawick, Kelso and Jedburgh--containing between 5,000 and 15,000 people. The economic centre of such a community is its high street, where historically--for centuries, in many instances--the retail sector has existed.
Those high streets are the backbone of the local community, functioning as a social meeting place as well as providing retail goods. People need a place where they can meet and exchange news, views and gossip. Social intercourse is as important to the local community as the business that is done in the high street. In my constituency, there is a real danger of blight in such areas. Blight is a pretty drastic word, but the situation is now serious.
Once the problem had been drawn to my attention, I took note of what had happened in the recent past. One of the difficulties that bedevil the Government relates to the collection of statistics about, for instance, turnover and closures. There are some statistics--small newsagents
have been monitored carefully by their trade association, and the community pharmacy campaign has been investigating individual sectors--but I suspect that the Government will find it hard to establish the way in which the trends are developing and the problem is building up.
There is anecdotal evidence, however. Anyone who wanders along the high streets of the United Kingdom will see that the atmosphere of diversity, wealth and colour is not what it was. Most premises are occupied either by banks and other financial institutions or by off-licences, which are doing very well. I know that the Government are concerned about that. There is an increasing number of charity shops, which is also causing concern.
The reasons for what is happening are many, varied and complicated. As I said at the outset, the Budget is an important part of the equation: the economic climate is a vital aspect. In my area, there are signs that things are beginning to pick up. Long may that continue, and I hope that the Government will use this afternoon's Budget statement as an opportunity to promote such developments.
Sociological factors are also having a dramatic effect on the high streets. Increased mobility enables people to travel further in order to shop and I fear that the situation will get worse before it gets better. Competition from supermarkets has also had an effect. In some market towns, there is a supermarket at one end of the high street--serving a useful function, it must be said--and an open market with a car park at the other end, functioning at the weekends. Twin pressures are exerted by the organised power of big commercial businesses such as Sainsbury, and competition from market traders and stallholders. Those pressures may have been underestimated in the past. Transport policy is another problem. The difficulty of convenient parking on the high streets is a major disincentive: in the past, people were much more willing to walk to and from shopping centres.
One of the main reasons why some high streets have suffered so much is that, because of financial constraints, local authorities have found it difficult to organise strategies to enhance local areas and underpin the high street environment. I hope that, if it achieves nothing else, this debate will lead to the recognition that not just central Government but local authorities have a vital role to play. I hope that the Government will acknowledge that. I also hope that central Government and local authorities will consider the effect of non-domestic and water and sewerage rates on the economic viability of some small family businesses.
I know that it will not be easy, but it would be a real step forward if a tax system could be established for the small retail sector that was more directly related to profitability. At present, if some of the small family businesses in the high streets of my town were required to pay rates on the basis of what they had earned at the end of the year, they would be receiving handouts from the local authority. Some are on the very margins of profitability. The issue is not simple and it is not new, but this Parliament should give it urgent attention.
Local authorities have an important function in setting the rules for planning and development. The previous Secretary of State for the Environment, the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer), is a man with whom I have little in common, but he did some sensible work--perhaps too late--in trying to redress the
balance between town centres and out-of-town supermarket development. The physical environment is extremely important for our high streets.
Tourism is an extremely and increasingly important industry and is promoted by a positive high street environment. Tourists look forward to being able to take advantage of a pleasant and interesting high street; those in south-east Scotland are not finding what they expect. We ignore at our peril the impact on the tourist industry of letting our market town centres fall into too much decay.
Corner shops and high street shops are increasingly a soft target for crime. The plate-glass window is an inviting target on Friday nights when people have drunk too much and are showing youthful exuberance, to put the kindest possible construction on it. The insurance companies have begun to put enormous premiums on replacing those windows, some of which are curved and extremely expensive. That knocks the stuffing out of family businesses that have to replace glass at great cost three, four or half a dozen times a year and to pay increased premiums. That is dispiriting, debilitating and demoralising.
In the middle term, the next 10 or 15 years, we face the prospect of additional pressure from electronic shopping. Information technology is moving on and we have electronic banking. The President of the United States was properly encouraging people to think about global marketing for small companies, and there may be some advantages in that, although I do not see how the sale of children's shoes in the high street could gain much benefit from access to the Internet.
None of those points will be new to the Minister, but they are worth putting on the record. The problems are getting worse and putting increasing pressure, day by day and month by month, on people trying to earn a living as retailers in small market towns.
My constituents are concerned about charity shops. I understand the emotional reaction, as people are worried that their high streets and market squares are being taken over by those shops and feel instinctively that they are responsible for the degradation. That analysis is superficial and wrong, because charity shops have a valuable role to play.
My generation and that of my parents and grandparents had more extended families and a hand-me-down system of recycling children's clothes, and five or 10 years ago some local charity shops were offering a valuable service in replacing that system, but things have moved on a long way since then and major national charities with big merchandising departments now take advantage of rate relief and the empty spaces in our high streets. Of course, we all support the causes for which they raise money, and I recognise, because they tell me so with monotonous regularity, that they are also under great pressure because of the national lottery.
The extent to which charity shops are filling gaps in high streets is beginning to be a matter for concern. The Government should examine carefully some of the rate exemption rules and whether they are being observed as punctiliously as they should be. I have no evidence for it, but my constituents feel that charity shops are taking unfair advantage of some of the exemptions.
Charity shops have an indirect impact on the downward spiral in high streets because they can afford rents that would fall if they were not there; in their absence, the owners of empty shops would be prepared to consider rent reductions to a level at which a bona fide small family business would be viable. They are unwittingly distorting free market processes.
We do not want to be antipathetic to charities and we want to keep the best of what they provide in our high streets, but we must recognise that there are now too many of them and that they have an indirect collective effect on the economies of our high streets.
I accept that it is not easy for the Government to have a hands-on, direct impact and transform the situation overnight--there are many underlying causes of the problem and the background is complex--but will the Minister acknowledge that there is a difficulty? I am sure that she does not need any extra tasks, but I hope that she will commit herself to a serious examination of the problems and lend a listening ear to those in the sector.
One of the problems that bedevil the sector is the fact that it does not have a united voice and an overarching view; it does not have access to the public relations machine of Sainsbury and other supermarket chains. The Federation of Small Businesses does valuable work, but it finds it difficult to bring together the many strands of the sector to give it the authority that it would like.
Will the Minister explain how the Government intend to deal with the cross-departmental nature of the problem? She is not in control of crime or local government, so the House would be grateful if she could explain how the different departmental perspectives can be brought to bear on the problem. On Budget day, we do not need to be told again that there are difficulties with money, but a little pump priming could go a long way.
A cross-departmental task force would give us some confidence that the Government are serious about dealing with the situation, although I know that they are reviewing much of the legislation, and one would expect nothing different from a new Administration, after 18 or 19 years of government by another party.
9.47 am
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