Westminster Hall

Thursday 28th November 2013 Westminster Hall

Thursday 28 November 2013

[Mr Graham Brady in the Chair]

Backbench business

Mental Health (Police Procedures)

Thursday 28th November 2013 Westminster Hall

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the sitting be now adjourned.—(Anne Milton.)

13:30

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

I look forward to this debate under your excellent chairmanship, Mr Brady. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for finding the time for this debate on a most important subject and I am pleased to see the interest, that the turnout here today shows.

The poor quality of life and of the services available to people struggling to live with mental ill health has been the subject of previous debates in the House. This debate relates to police involvement with people with mental ill health, particularly during times of mental health crisis. Mental health crisis, as defined by the Royal College of Psychiatrists, is

“when the mind is at melting point”.

It may involve an immediate risk of self-harm or suicide, extreme anxiety, panic attacks or a psychotic episode. How we treat the most vulnerable in society lies at the heart of our values. We made a decision not to hide away the sick and disabled, as we had hidden them away in the past in asylums and institutions, but we still have a long way to go in granting them equal status in society and equal access to justice.

The Mind report “At risk, yet dismissed” shows that those who suffer from mental ill health are three times more likely to be victims of crime. Shockingly, 50% of people with some form of mental ill health have experienced a crime in the past year, and severely ill women with mental ill health are 10 times more likely to have been assaulted. Crimes are less likely to be reported and prosecuted, because people with mental ill health fear being dismissed or disbelieved. Sadly, the evidence shows that more often than not they are. How does the Minister plan to improve police understanding of mental ill health and ensure more accurate recording of such crimes, and will he give a commitment to greater investigation and prosecution for such offences?

Another reason for not reporting is fear of police powers in relation to mental ill health. Too often, between 5 pm and 9 am during the week, at weekends and on bank holidays, police officers are the only first responders available in a mental health crisis, despite the fact that they lack the medical knowledge, skills and training to resolve and manage the crisis. They respond not because there is a real and immediate threat to members of the public, but because mental health services are understaffed, under-resourced and overstretched, and lack facilities.

For example, Miss P, who is 23 and a size 8, is a sweet, loving young girl who has suffered mental ill health for most of her life. She finds it difficult to build relationships and she is lousy at keeping appointments. She does not drink alcohol, except when she is in mental health crisis, and when she does, she turns into a violent and abusive person. Local mental health services concede that she needs a specialist placement, but they cannot find one. In the past five years, police have been called to 130 incidents and attended court to give evidence for 81 offences, resulting in 18 terms of imprisonment. The gaps between her prison sentences are becoming briefer—days, not weeks—and her self-harming and suicide attempts are escalating. The cost to that young girl, her family, the police, the courts, the probation service and the Prison Service is huge. I am told that it approaches £1 million, all for one young girl.

When the Minister sums up, I hope he will address this critical question: how much longer will we expect our police services to process vulnerable people through the criminal justice system due to mental health, underfunding and failures?

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend, the hon. Member for Halesowen and Rowley Regis (James Morris) and the right hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Burstow) on securing this debate. My hon. Friend will be pleased to know that, as a result of the work done by her and others, the Select Committee on Home Affairs will be looking into this issue, with a possible report next summer.

Will my hon. Friend comment on the study by Nottingham university, published in May this year, which shows that 56% of custody officers suffer from depression and anxiety? It is not just the victims of crime, but the officers themselves. Is it not right that the new College of Policing should carefully consider the issue of training?

[Mrs Moon]

As always, my right hon. Friend makes excellent information available to the House. I am delighted to hear of the study to be made next year by his Committee, which is highly regarded across the House. He is right to focus on mental ill health among police. It is little surprise, given the amount and range of incidents with which we require them to deal. That is why we must ensure that the police are called to attend only incidents that they can deal with and that they have the skills and capability to manage, so they do not go home at the end of their shift feeling guilty and bereft about an incident that they may perceive they dealt with badly. My right hon. Friend made a most helpful intervention, and I thank him.

The Centre for Mental Health states that police are the first point of contact for a person in mental health crisis and that up to 15% of police incidents have a mental health dimension. Other people have told me that mental health interventions occupy up to 30% of police time. The Royal College of Psychiatrists recognises that in some areas police cells are the routine place of safety, under section 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983, when a mental health crisis requires urgent assessment and management. Many of those detained come from socially deprived backgrounds, and some black and minority ethnic groups are over-represented.

The Royal College reports considerable geographic variation in the use of police cells. During 2012-13, five police areas recorded more than 500 uses of police-based section 136 places of safety, while four areas recorded 10 or fewer uses, and one had zero. The difference was that the latter areas had better health-based services and facilities. Will the Minister undertake to talk with the Department of Health about the urgent need for commissioning boards to provide an adequate number of staffed health-based places of safety in every part of the country? At present, 36% of all places of safety under section 136 are thought to involve police custody. In 2011-12, an estimated 8,000 to 11,000 orders were made, with 347 involving under-18s. Will the Minister ensure that accurate figures on how often and in what circumstances police officers are called to deal with mental health crises are available, so that we can get a clear picture of the problem?

People held by police under section 136 are, as I have said, the most acutely vulnerable. One study found that in 81% of cases involving police-based places of safety, the person was self-harming or suicidal. The Independent Police Complaints Commission found that 35% of deaths in police custody involve people with mental ill health. Alarming reports from Inquest show that a number of those deaths are linked to police restraint techniques, and that 65 people took their lives within two days of leaving a police place of safety. Between 20% and 30% of people held on section 136 detentions in police cells were subsequently sectioned.

The impact on time and costs associated with police engagement in mental ill health has never been calculated accurately, but it is clear that, in a variety of ways, health service costs are being passed to the police services. It is common for police officers taking people in mental health crisis to accident and emergency or medical-based places of safety for an assessment to be told, “There’s no bed available”, “The person is too drunk”, “They are under the influence of drugs”, “They are aggressive”, “They are a child”, or, “They have a learning disability”, all of which condemn that person in crisis to a night in police custody. How much longer can we allow these informal exclusion criteria around drugs, alcohol, aggression, children and learning disabilities to continue?

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making all the points that are in my notes—although I was intending not to speak in the debate, but merely to intervene. That is exactly what local police officers have said to me. They feel uncomfortable about the police having to perform that role and becoming the place of safety of last resort. Several parents of adult sons who can be difficult and dangerous have come to me. They are reluctant to call for help when they feel that they are under threat or that their son may threaten other people, because they do not want them to be in the police system—they do not want to criminalise them— but they know that there is nowhere else they can refer them to.

[Mrs Moon]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. She makes an excellent case for ensuring that crisis intervention teams are available with the skills and capability to understand and manage mental health problems. These are not the skills that we provide our police officers with; this is the skills base that we provide our mental health nursing professionals with, which is why specialist crisis teams in mental health services must be expanded and made generally available.

Places of safety in bridewells remove police staff from the front line, as they supervise and monitor vulnerable, at-risk individuals and arrange mental health assessments. The Health and Social Care Information Centre found that, even where a place of safety was health based, in 74% of cases transportation was provided by police, not the ambulance service. The police were providing an ambulance/taxi service.

More than 40,500 patients absconded from mental health units in the past five years. Again, police officers are expected to find and return these individuals, even when they pose no risk to wider society. Then there are calls to respond to understaffed mental health units where a patient’s behaviour is deemed to be unmanageable. These are not tasks for police officers. To quote the Police Federation:

“Police officers should not be called to mental health premises to assist in the restraint of aggressive/violent patients. Mental health professionals are trained in the control and restraint of mentally ill patients and have powers to sedate them, whereas police officers are trained to subdue, restrain and arrest violent people.”

Inquest, Mind and others have highlighted the risks of police restraint, as opposed to mental health restraint techniques. I welcome the Royal College of Nursing study into restraint techniques. I also welcome the nine pilot street triage schemes operating across the 43 police forces where mental health nurses are either available with police officers responding or available to consult. The schemes are making a huge difference, but we cannot wait until 2015 for them to be assessed and reviewed before we put them in place across the public sphere.

We need suitably staffed hospital places of safety in all areas, catering for all age groups and available 24 hours a day, so that police stations are used only in exceptional circumstances. We also need section 136 to be used less by better, improved mental health services generally—however, I want to focus on removing the police from the equation. We need accurate data—a point I have already raised with the Minister—on the use of section 136 in the police service. The report from the independent commission on mental health and policing states:

“We need to ensure the culture within policing is one that recognises their role in supporting people in crisis and their responsibilities under the Mental Health Act.”

There needs to be a higher level of training and awareness for police officers. The online training that is currently available is just not good enough. Some forces have teamed up with community groups, local health trusts and universities, working with mental health patients, to improve their operation. Best practice from these groups needs to be shared and expanded.

The Association of Chief Police Officers lead on mental health says:

“There should be a reduction from 72 to 24 hour detention time…for a”

section 136

“assessment to take place when a police place of safety is utilised… 72 hours should remain for health based”

assessment. The 24-hour period would

“reflect the detention time limits in the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984…To support this, a statutory time limit for assessments to be undertaken by all health professionals”

for those

“in police custody should be put in place. The Pace clock should be stopped for 4 hours while assessments are carried out where there are criminal offences to be faced”,

so that police are not restricted in the time that they have to cross-examine someone. I am confident that I reflect the feeling in this Chamber and the wider House today. No one would be turned away from an A and E department if they had had a stroke or broken a limb, if they had had alcohol or were aggressive. We cannot let mental health services operate to different criteria.

I want briefly to focus on what is a growing area. We need to be sure that we have clear guidance and responses in place for the 800,000 people in the UK diagnosed with dementia. A 91-year-old man suffering with psychotic dementia was living at home with the support of his family and the mental health team. One evening, a neighbour called the family to say he was wandering the street looking for his wife, who had died six years previously. His son went immediately to his father and at around 9 pm called the out-of-hours health service for advice. The doctor took the details and asked whether the son wanted to bring his father to the hospital or whether he wanted the doctor to visit the house, but the son said, “No, it’s okay. I’m on top of things. Dad’s okay. I’ve given him a cup of tea and he’s heading for bed.” By 11.30 pm the gentleman was in bed, fast asleep and his son went home.

At 2.30 am, the family had another call from the neighbour, saying, “The police are breaking into your dad’s house.” Why? Because the out-of-hours doctor decided to watch his back and had sent an ambulance, but it did not arrive till three hours after he called it. The man was fast asleep and the ambulance crew felt they had to get a response, so they called out the police. The police climbed on to the ledge over the front door, looked in and saw the man in bed, fast asleep and said, “He’s fast asleep”. The ambulance crew said, “No, we must see him.” The police broke in, terrifying the man, who was greatly distressed—as can be imagined—so they took him to A and E, because they could not handle the situation. That is an appalling situation. The family tried ringing the ambulance service and the police, saying, “Leave him alone. He’s fine,” but they carried on. He was highly distressed when he got to the hospital, and thought he had done something wrong and felt that he was the criminal. This was an appalling case.

There are good ideas and good practice for when people are missing, for example, or have wandered, including using taxi drivers, Citizens Advice and neighbourhood watch to look out for individuals. Police officers need clear guidance on how not to exacerbate a situation by going in, in uniform, and frightening people who are wandering.

We have lost 15,000 police officers in the last three years. The police must prioritise tackling crime, ensuring public safety and upholding the law. It is not the task of police services to fill gaps in an overstretched mental health service. We need to consider how to respond to the most vulnerable in society. The police must build their partnerships with agencies and organisations best equipped to provide appropriate help and support. I look forward to colleagues’ contributions to the debate, to the Minister’s and the shadow Minister’s responses, and to improved quality of services for those in mental health crisis.

13:50

[James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to speak in this important debate under your chairmanship, Mr Brady.

I thank the Backbench Business Committee, the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Burstow). The three of us came together to secure this debate. I also speak in my capacity as chairman of the all-party group on mental health.

As the hon. Member for Bridgend said, the police are often on the front line in dealing with people who are suffering a mental health crisis. As she mentioned, it is estimated that up to 40% of police activity is related to mental health issues. In my region of the west midlands, West Midlands police estimates that 20% of all incidents that it deals with involve individuals with mental health problems.

Police officers are often asked to deal with complex and challenging situations on the ground. As the hon. Lady pointed out, they have specific powers under section 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983, and it might be worth dwelling on that section’s specific wording:

“If a constable finds in a place to which the public have access a person who appears to him to be suffering from mental disorder and to be in immediate need of care or control, the constable may, if he thinks it necessary to do so in the interests of that person or for the protection of other persons, remove that person to a place of safety within the meaning of section 135 above.”

The latest figures show that some 21,814 people were detained using section 136 powers last year. As the Royal College of Psychiatrists has pointed out—the hon. Lady mentioned this—far too many of those individuals are still detained in police custody suites. The Royal College of Psychiatrists talks about 36% of those people being detained in police cells, which are essentially a proxy for a health care place of safety.

There were 15 deaths in police custody last year, of which seven could be attributed to, or were related to, specific mental health concerns. A number of the deaths followed the use of the police’s section 136 powers. A number of the deaths are currently being investigated.

Section 136 is part of the 1983 Act, which built on the Mental Health Act 1959. In 1959, there were still a considerable number of asylums in Britain; the whole complexion of our approach to mental health care was completely different from today’s. Thankfully, we do not have asylums and we are making huge efforts to treat people in appropriate settings and in the community.

The reason for section 136 is essentially to give the police powers when someone has absconded from an asylum-based setting. There is a strong argument, which I put to the Minister, that we should consider reviewing the section 136 power in the context of how we approach the treatment of crisis care in mental-health settings in the 21st century. I am not saying that the police should not have the power, in certain circumstances, to detain people, but we should have a full review of how that power is used.

The relationship raises a number of important issues, not just about how the police are using the power but about how they interact with the health service when dealing with people detained under section 136. As the hon. Lady said, we should work towards ensuring that places of safety are located in appropriate health care settings.

As the hon. Lady also said, we must ensure that the police have adequate training to deal with the often difficult and challenging situations that they face. However we reform the system, there will always be circumstances in which the police have to deal with people suffering from severe mental anguish and difficulty. The police need the appropriate intensive training necessary to deal with such difficult and challenging circumstances, but it is also true that other agencies and public bodies, such as the national health service and the ambulance service, have a responsibility to work with the police. We must ensure that all those agencies are working in alignment.

In the west midlands, for example, West Midlands police has developed a good working relationship with the West Midlands ambulance service such that, when West Midlands police is dealing with people suffering from severe mental issues under section 136, an ambulance, rather than a police car, should take that person to a place of safety, thereby not creating the context of criminalisation. There is a good working relationship in my area, but I know there are many examples across the country of where that is not the case and of where there are barriers that prevent such important co-ordinated working, which supports people who are suffering from severe mental health crisis.

Michael Brown is a particularly interesting police inspector in the west midlands; he tweets under the name MentalHealthCop. He has been writing on his award-winning blog about some of the police’s difficulties when interacting with the national health service and about some of the blockages in the system. As the hon. Lady pointed out, one of those difficulties is often the reluctance of local NHS staff, particularly in A and E, to play a role in the section 136 pathway, if I may use that phrase. Staff are reluctant to take responsibility, and there are often confused lines of responsibility between the police and the NHS about who will take responsibility for the care of an individual.

The hon. Lady alluded to the assumption in certain parts of the NHS that the most clinically complex patients, who are often suffering from a mental health problem related to the overuse of drugs and alcohol, should somehow be left in a police cell until they sober up or recover. That situation is not acceptable in any circumstances—no one suffering from a complex mental health condition should normally be placed in police cells.

Police cells are simply not the right environment for such people to end up in. I am not saying that there are no circumstances in which such a person should be held in police cells—there may be particular circumstances in which they should—but we should move to a situation in which we do not, in a civilised and compassionate society, house people in police cells when they are suffering some of the most desperate moments in their life.

Like the hon. Lady, I welcome the street triage pilots that the Government have been running across the country. Police and community psychiatric nurses are working together to resolve issues on the ground, and I look forward to the Minister’s view on how those pilots have been working and when we can expect a coherent evaluation of their success. We need to move quickly to roll out those pilots across the country.

There is a broader point on our approach to mental health crisis care in general. This is ongoing work about which many Members are concerned, but we must ensure that there is better integration between the health service, the police and local crisis care teams, often with the involvement of social services. I understand that the Government are working on a crisis care concordat, which will outline the roles and responsibilities of all agencies in relation to crisis care. One way of reducing the police’s use of section 136 is to ensure that we have a coherent and integrated approach to dealing with mental health crisis care in Britain. We need to tackle the problem head on. The Royal College of Psychiatrists has said that we

“need to focus on reducing the need for section 136 by ensuring that patients, their families have ready access to appropriate and timely crisis care.”

I want to dwell for a moment on the role of police and crime commissioners. Although they have come in for some criticism, some incredibly good work has been done on this issue by PCCs over the past few months. In Staffordshire, the PCC has been able to take a strategic view of the relationship between the police and local health services and has put in place processes to start tackling the problems.

We need suitably staffed hospital-based places of safety. That is an absolutely critical and crucial part of the picture. A police station should be used in exceptional circumstances only. I ask the Minister to consider reviewing the section 136 powers and updating the definition of an appropriate place of safety, which is set out in the 1983 Act.

I want to mention a particular case that is tangentially related to today’s debate and illustrates the importance of all agencies—police, probation, social services and prisons—in dealing with mental health. Members may remember the tragic case of Christina Edkins, who was brutally killed on her way to school from Birmingham to Halesowen earlier this year. It was a particularly tragic and brutal killing, which shocked the whole community in my constituency.

It turns out that the killer, Phillip Simelane, who had been in prison several times and had a history of disturbed and violent behaviour, had been given a psychiatric assessment in prison. That assessment had raised some serious issues about his mental condition, but, following a breakdown in the process, when Simelane was released from prison he somehow got lost in the system. The relationship between mental health services—I think it was the Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust—police, probation and social services was not close enough and Simelane was lost to the system. That loss resulted in an absolute tragedy for a totally innocent young girl on her way to school.

I raise that case in the context of this debate only because the importance of all those who deal with people with severe mental heath issues can be seen in the story. The consequences of failure can be devastating for individuals and families. Each agency has an absolute responsibility to ensure that we avoid such tragedies, which can have a devastating impact on communities.

[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend recognise that this is about not only the police and the national health service, but the courts? Better training must be available to the courts, so that they are better able to deal with such issues.

[James Morris]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Mental health training and awareness need to exist throughout the criminal justice system, because, although I am not going to discuss this in my speech, I think that victims of crime have disproportionate levels of mental health problems and other issues.

In a compassionate and civilised society, we owe it to the most vulnerable and those suffering from acute mental distress, anguish and confusion, who get picked up by the police and are subject to section 136, to treat them with the dignity they deserve at a time when they may be experiencing some of the most difficult situations of their lives. It is incumbent on the police, mental health services, social workers and the Government to be responsible for ensuring that we achieve that goal of health-based places of safety where people can be treated in a compassionate and civilised way and can get back on a path to recovery. It is incumbent on us all to work together, both in government and in local communities, to ensure that that happens.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Graham Brady (in the Chair)]

Order. I want to move to the winding-up speeches at about 25 minutes to 3. I am not putting a time limit on speeches, but I am flagging that up.

14:06

[Paul Burstow (Sutton and Cheam) (LD)]

I will keep that in mind, Mr Brady. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for enabling us to have this debate and for rescheduling it so quickly. I congratulate both the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) on starting the debate and setting out many of the issues so well and my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen and Rowley Regis (James Morris) on outlining so much of the important ground in this area.

My hon. Friend referred to the blogger Michael Brown, who tweets under the name MentalHealthCop and rightly won the Mind digital media award last year. He probably deserved to win it again this year as he continues through his blog to inform and educate not only the public, but many of his fellow officers. More power to his elbow for that.

When I was preparing for this debate, the stand-out fact that jarred with me was that 36% of all people subject to place-of-safety orders find themselves in a police cell rather than a hospital. On the most recent figures, that is 7,761 place-of-safety orders. According to Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary, the average length of stay in a police cell is over 10 hours and 32 minutes —more than 10 hours!

Such people have not committed any crime, but have been judged under section 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983. They are not criminals; they are experiencing a mental health emergency and are being let down by a health service that institutionally discriminates against those with mental health problems. There are many ways of measuring whether we have achieved parity of esteem between physical and mental health, and the numbers we lock up in police cells must be among the starkest measures of progress. Today’s debate is about the role of the police service in addressing the needs of people with mental health problems. The police cannot completely be removed from the equation and do have a role to play.

One in four of us will experience a mental health problem at any one time. We are talking about something commonplace, but often hidden in plain sight in our society. That is why Victor Adebowale, in his report for the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, was right to say that mental health issues are a part of the core business of policing. The current situation is not properly serving that purpose.

The issue is not peripheral. Rates of mental health conditions among offenders range from 50% to 90%. There is no escaping the fact that the police, often as first responders, are and will continue to deal with people suffering from mental health problems. In London, according to estimates by the mental health unit of the Metropolitan police, 15% to 25% of police activity is related to mental health issues. Some estimates put the level much higher—40% has been cited in the debate already. Either way, that amounts, in London alone, to more than 600,000 calls a year related to mental health difficulties.

It is important to stress that people with mental health problems are much more likely to be the victims, rather than the perpetrators, of crime. That fact all too often gets glossed over in how our media report such things. The impact of crime on people with mental health problems can be far more profound, with deeper consequences, than for those with greater resilience. That is often not reflected fairly or appropriately in how such matters are reported.

In October, Victim Support and the mental health charity Mind published their study of the victimisation of people with mental health problems—“At risk, yet dismissed”—and it challenges many of the popular misconceptions. Some of the facts from that report have already been referred to, but the ones that stand out for me are that women with severe mental illness are 10 times more likely to be assaulted and that almost half of people suffering from a severe mental illness were victims of a crime in the past year. The impact of such crimes on the victim is huge.

As the Chair of the Select Committee on Home Affairs, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), pointed out in his intervention on the hon. Member for Bridgend, it is also right to recognise that the police themselves are in a stressful occupation, which is often distressing and a cause of real difficulties for them. Estimates suggest that in London alone the mental illness costs to the Metropolitan Police Service are equivalent to £1,000 per employee—a huge, unmanaged cost.

The nature and role of police work, however, also require the police to be in control and psychologically robust. All police services, and the MPS especially, are therefore in a unique situation, in which the mental health and well-being of staff require particular attention. The statistic we were given earlier—the 56% of staff working in custody suites who are themselves reporting anxiety and depression—is a stark reminder that our debate is not only about them out there, but about all of us experiencing mental health problems in our lives.

Lord Adebowale’s report included 12 recommendations. Incidentally, although the report was commissioned by the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, my understanding is that he has not yet responded to it. When is he likely to do so?

I will pick up six stand-out common themes from the report: first, the lack of mental health awareness, touched on in earlier contributions; secondly, the lack of guidance and training on suicide prevention, which is an important element; thirdly, the lack of adequate care for vulnerable people in custody, which goes to the heart of the debate; fourthly, poor inter-agency working—without doubt one of the keys to unlocking so much of what does not work; fifthly, the disproportionate use of force and restraint; and finally, the failure to communicate with families, which all too often sits at the heart of failure on these issues.

Much of that is echoed in the report “A Criminal Use of Police Cells?” by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary, which found that the use of police custody as a place of safety varies from 6% to 76% of the total number of people detained under section 136. As a result of a shortage of the right staff in the right places at the right times, people who have not committed a crime are often treated as if they were criminals. HMIC put it this way in its report:

“those detained under section 136 who were taken to a police station were generally treated like any other person in respect of the booking-in procedure; risk assessment; and, ultimately, being locked in a cell (rather than being taken to another part of the station).”

The report also found multi-agency working to be patchy, as was awareness of training resources and activity—they are clearly the areas where relatively small changes could lead to big differences in operation.

The recently published experimental analysis of police data offers some important insights. It bears out the HMIC finding that there is huge variation in the use of police cells as a place of safety. The Sussex, Devon and Cornwall, West Yorkshire, Avon and Somerset, and Hampshire forces all recorded more than 500 uses of section 136, while Lancashire, Merseyside, Hertfordshire and City of London recorded 10 or fewer uses.

Drilling down into those figures and using them to understand why things are so different and what best practice might look like, and to ensure its better spread, we can see why the Government should be commended for having the statistics collected and such analysis done. Buried a little deeper in the experimental data, however, is something else. For the first time, there are estimates for the number of under-18s held in police cells under section 136.

In the past year, according to the most recently published statistics, 263 children and young people were held in police custody. The report urges caution about that figure, because of the experimental nature of the data, and I can understand that caution. It should still be a source of shame and a spur to act, however, that we are locking up children at a time of deep and acute mental health crisis. The hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) has rightly challenged on that issue—she raised it in Health questions—and I hope that she will be speaking in the debate.

I hope that the soon-to-be-published concordat on emergency mental health care will do something—more than something—to stop the barbaric practice of children being held in police cells when they are having a mental health crisis. Indeed, next year the Care Quality Commission will be conducting a themed inspection, looking at the whole pathway of crisis care—the role of the police service and of various aspects of the health service—and I hope that it will also cast light on this issue.

I have some questions for the Minister. There has been good progress on rolling out the liaison and diversion services in custody suites. That early identification, assessment and referral can result in much better outcomes. Will the Minister give some indication of when the Treasury will sign off the outline business case for national roll-out of the service? Given the numbers of young people in the criminal justice system with mental health needs, does the liaison and diversion service cover them as well? Will it ensure that they are always included?

Street triage is being piloted by the Home Office and the Department of Health, and we have heard how that can make a significant difference by bringing health professionals into the equation. How will the street triage model fit with liaison and diversion? Also, to repeat a rightly put question, how is that model being evaluated, and what are the time scales for a rapid roll-out should the evaluation show that street triage is working well, which I understand it is showing? How quickly therefore can we get it out throughout the country?

In the report on police custody as a place of safety, HMIC recommends that if there is not significant reduction in the inappropriate use of police custody by April 2016, the Mental Health Act should be amended to remove police stations as a place of safety, except on an exceptional basis. HMIC goes on to state that “exceptional basis” should be written into the law and defined. Will the Minister set out the Government view of that recommendation? If that was signalled as an intention of the Government, would it serve as a further spur to action throughout government, the NHS, social care and police services?

Finally, sitting at the heart of the disparity between mental and physical health and of the institutional bias and discrimination that people with mental illness suffer is deep-seated stigma. The Government deserve much credit for funding the Time to Change anti-stigma campaign—a global leader in such campaigning that is making a real difference in this country. So far, a number of Departments have signed up to play their own part in the Time to Change campaign. I understand that there are discussions with the Home Office, and it would be good to know from the Minister today when the Home Office will be signing up to Time to Change. Furthermore, the attitude to and awareness of mental health problems remain an issue in the police service. One way in which forces could address that is by working together to sign up to Time to Change. Will the Minister use his good offices to promote Time to Change to chief constables and police and crime commissioners?

In conclusion, I want to cite the HMIC report and give two quotes from it from people detained under section 136. The first is:

“I was discharged by the mental health crisis team as a low risk to myself and others and not requiring follow-up. I am concerned that my section 136 detention [in police custody] will show up on…enhanced criminal record checks…in the future.”

Perhaps the Minister will say whether we can ensure that that does not happen.

The second is:

“What have I done to deserve this? I was ill; I was locked up because I was ill.”

Surely that is not what the police service is there for; that is what the health service is there for.

14:19

[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

I welcome the opportunity to serve under your chairmanship in this debate, Mr Brady, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon), who I am delighted to count as a friend, although she is unfortunately an Opposition Member, and my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen and Rowley Regis (James Morris). I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak. I also congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Burstow), and I pay tribute to him for his work as a Health Minister.

Let me put what I want to talk about in a little context. As I think most Members know, I am Member of Parliament for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport. My constituency contains a naval garrison that is the base for 3 Commando Brigade, Royal Marines, as well as a base for the Royal Navy. Members may be interested to know that Charles Cross police station, in Plymouth city centre, is the busiest police station in the whole of England, so I do quite a bit of work with the police station and go to talk to the police there.

The reason for how busy the station is may well be the size of its catchment area—it goes over to Tavistock and also to Torpoint and Saltash—or it may be because Plymouth is a military garrison city, as there are certainly significant cultural issues that go with that. We also have more licensed premises in Plymouth than there are in the whole of Liverpool—in fact, it is nearly double the number. There are several really big issues crowding in on the police in Plymouth. I pay real tribute to the police officers who work at the custody suite in the Charles Cross police station, who find themselves under a fair amount of pressure.

My right hon. Friend the Minister will find a number of themes going through the debate today, reflecting the great concerns we have across the House on this issue. Since the previous time we discussed this matter, real progress has been made and I pay tribute to him and his colleagues, including those in the Department of Health, for that progress.

The last time I talked in a debate on a similar subject, I told the story of a 17-year-old girl who was highly autistic, and who had kicked off, for reasons of mental ill health, in one of the retail centres in my constituency. She was taken to Charles Cross police station. I have to say that the police found the situation very difficult, and were rather challenged by what happened. I want to talk a little about what we can try to do about that sort of situation. When the girl’s mother arrived to pick up her child and help her, she found that the girl was banging her head against a wall and having real difficulty with the situation she was in. To my mind, that shows that we need to make sure not only that there is better training for our police but, much more importantly, that community health nurses are located in our police stations, to help the police identify situations such as that one.

Since I last spoke on the issue, Glenbourne unit, up at Derriford hospital in my constituency, has been refitted and reopened. I am delighted that that work has happened and that there is now much better co-ordination across the divide. However, the story I have told is not unique. I suspect that it happens in every single town and city up and down the country. Local progress has been made, but we have further to go.

I want to make another brief point. Plymouth is a naval military city, so we need to ensure that we have a much better understanding of how military veterans are treated. They have been through some pretty difficult times in Afghanistan and Iraq. My right hon. Friend the Minister will know that I have been pressing him to consider the use of military courts, not to put veterans in front of a court martial or anything like that—they have of course retired from the military—but because we need to act with much more sympathy when dealing with veterans who find themselves in the justice system.

I learned about that matter when I went to the United States of America with the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee. There we saw at first hand how the US deals with veterans. There is a specific Department of Veterans Affairs, which is able to assess people and keep in much closer touch with them. The Department gives all veterans a mobile telephone, so it can ring them up at least two or three times during the course of the year to make sure that they are getting on well. The US also has specific courts for veterans that are staffed by people who have military experience. I urge my right hon. Friend to consider whether, in a similar way, we could use those of our magistrates who have experience in the military and will have much better understanding of what can happen to veterans. We visited a court in Little Rock, Arkansas, that has been highly successful and has found that veterans do not reoffend once they have been through that process. There are mechanisms in place in the US to ensure that veterans are looked after.

My final point is that we need places of refuge and safety. In my constituency, there is a brilliant organisation called Twelves Company—if my right hon. Friend is interested, I would be very willing to bring up members of that organisation to have a conversation with him—that deals with sexual health. One of my constituents was raped by her husband and had real mental health problems; I hope that I played a small role for her by taking her to see Twelves Company. Since then I have not noticed her tweeting quite so much on the issue, so I hope some balance has been found for her and that we have helped her.

I call for a more joined-up approach to this matter. We need to ensure that the police have alternatives signposted to them, and that the health services and the courts and justice system recognise that mental health is an issue to consider. Frankly, it is not rocket science, it is mental health.

14:26

[Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)]

I congratulate all the previous speakers in this debate, and start by declaring an interest: I am married to a full-time consultant psychiatrist who chairs the Westminster parliamentary liaison committee on behalf of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

Perhaps more relevantly to today’s debate, I should point out that I have been in a police cell in the middle of the night. I hasten to add that it was in a medical capacity, but I congratulate the Secretary of State for Health on advocating work experience for MPs. I would advocate more MPs spending a night in the cells. If they did, they would realise that that is absolutely the last place someone should be if they are acutely distressed by a mental illness.

That is particularly the case for an acutely distressed 12-year-old. Can we imagine a situation in which a 12-year-old child with a broken leg would be taken to a casualty department because there was no specialist orthopaedic surgeon or facility to assess them? That would be utterly unthinkable, yet in Devon and Cornwall alone, on three occasions since the start of this year 12 and 13-year-olds who have been acutely distressed with mental health issues have been held in police cells. That is utterly unacceptable for anyone, but it is particularly unacceptable that on 25 occasions—I would point out to the Minister that this is in Devon and Cornwall alone—children of 17 or under have been in that situation.

If we look at the situation for adults, we see that, shockingly, there have been 674 occasions on which people have been assessed in cells. As we have heard, the average time detained in that situation is 10 hours. On only 277 occasions have those assessments taken place in an appropriate place of safety. Devon and Cornwall is second behind Sussex in that terrible league of shame.

The situation is not the police’s fault. I want to stress that, and I pay tribute to the members of the police alongside whom I have worked in the past, as a forensic medical examiner, for their professionalism. Many police officers have sent me really heartfelt e-mails describing the difficulties they face. The situation is putting huge pressure on the police. It is a totally inappropriate use of resources. As Lord Adebowale has pointed out, it represents very poor inter-agency working, but there is no financial incentive for the NHS to change because the burden of resourcing falls on the police services.

The situation is totally unacceptable on any clinical level. I am disappointed that there is no Health Minister sitting alongside the Minister today, because ultimately the situation requires a total refocusing of services. If we look at the statistics, we see that 82% of those who are detained under section 136 do not go on to compulsory admission to hospital. That highlights the point that many of these situations could be avoided in the first place.

I am sorry to say that some general practitioners will not see patients unless they have registered. Someone who is acutely distressed and has paranoia as a result of mental illness might not recognise that they are unwell and therefore might not register or go to see a doctor. Consultant psychiatrists might refuse to see a patient without a GP referral. Those are all hurdles in the system. Time and again, carers may be desperate to access help for people who are really unwell, but they must fall off the cliff and become acutely unwell in a public place before the police can step in with a section 136 order that could have been avoided.

I thoroughly welcome the pilot project using triage, but street triage should not be necessary because we should pick up such situations much earlier. I would like volunteers who work with the homeless, for example, and who may be aware that someone is slipping into a distressed state, to be able to refer them directly to psychiatric services and bypass primary care. Of course, I would like all primary care doctors to ensure that they deliver the right care at the right time to all their patients, as the good ones do, and directly and actively seek out people who are homeless and vulnerable but who may not come forward to seek help.

Much of the problem is about funding—it would be wrong not to make that clear. The funding of units where people can be seen in an appropriate place of safety is crucial. It is no surprise that the local authorities that have most use of police cells are often in rural areas, where there are additional geographical challenges in providing appropriate places of safety. But if parity of esteem is to have more than just a hollow ring to it, we must ensure that within the NHS cake there is fair distribution of funding for mental health, and we must recognise in funding formulae that rural areas sometimes face extreme challenges. Sparsity must be recognised in funding if there is to be fairness.

Another problem is that mental health beds are running “too hot”. The CQC has said that in 50% of areas bed occupancy is 90%, and in 15% of areas it is 100%. That causes delays throughout the system. Ultimately, there is a problem not just with appropriate places of safety, but beyond that with having beds available when people need admission. On four occasions in Devon and Cornwall, the process of assessment has taken so long that a bed that was provisionally booked was taken by the time the assessment had been made. All those causes of delays in the system must be addressed: the availability of suitably qualified section 12 approved doctors; the availability of psychiatric beds; and, crucially, the availability of appropriate places of safety.

Will the Minister examine the effect on children when medical facilities are not suitable? There may be secure children’s homes— my preference, of course, would be to have a medical facility available, but I can say from personal experience that anything is better than a police cell. Police cells in the middle of the night are desperately frightening places. They are often full of people who are drunk and shouting. It is unthinkable that a child should be in that environment in a police cell. I hope that the Minister will say that if by next year children as young as 12 are still being put in police cells, Parliament will legislate to abolish that.

[Mr Graham Brady (in the Chair)]

Order. I am grateful to hon. Members for keeping to time so well. If the shadow Minister and the Minister take no more than 12 minutes each, there will be a couple of minutes for the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon), who opened the debate, to wind up.

14:34

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

It is an honour, Mr Brady, to serve under your chairmanship. We have all seen in our constituencies the pain suffered by those with mental health problems, the trauma that that can cause to their families and local communities, and the immense problems that may arise for the police. I welcome the debate and the initiative taken by my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon), the right hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Burstow), the hon. Member for Halesowen and Rowley Regis (James Morris), and the powerful testimony about what happens at the sharp end from the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston).

Police officers have many different roles. They maintain order, protect life, limb and property, prevent and deter offences and, when an offence has been committed, take appropriate measures to bring the offender to justice. However, as the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester police, Sir Peter Fahy, warned earlier this year, policing and mental health problems have increasingly become the main issue for his officers responding to emergency calls, and that

“the force was struggling to cope.”

He is not alone.

Indeed, as the right hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam said, such is the increasing number of calls that recent reports about the Metropolitan police’s new protocol suggest that officers have been ordered not to respond to calls from mental health units and emergency departments for help to control and restrain patients unless there is

“a significant threat to life and limb”.

Such an uneasy interface between the health service and the police does not benefit anyone, least of all those suffering from mental health issues. That is why HMIC, charities, chief constables, police and crime commissioners, the Police Federation and others have all expressed their concern for both the police and those suffering from mental health issues under the current system.

The role of police officers is to ensure the safety of the public and deal with individuals who pose a threat to others or themselves. In an emergency involving an individual with mental health issues, more often than not a bobby will be first on the scene. Too often, police officers and staff must deal with people with complex mental health needs alone, instead of with the support of experienced and trained medical professionals. They are required by the law, when appropriate, to take the individual to a place of safety. More often than not, the only option is to take them into custody. It is not right that people with mental health issues who have not committed a crime are treated as criminals. Those detained under section 136 may not have committed a crime, but are suspected of suffering a mental health disorder.

Worryingly, a joint review by HMIC, the Care Quality Commission and Healthcare Inspectorate Wales found that police custody was still being used as a primary or secondary place of safety as a result of, among other factors,

“insufficient staff at a health-based place of safety”

and

“the absence of available beds at the health-based place of safety”.

That is increasingly putting a great strain on our police service. Statistics show that such incidents may tie up officers for up to eight hours. That in turn adds further strain on those suffering from mental health issues, because they are treated like any other person taken into custody during the booking-in procedure and risk assessment, and ultimately when locked in a cell.

At the heart of the difficulty—several speakers referred to this, including my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend—is the fact that 15,000 police officers will be lost by the next election, and police resources are already stretched incredibly thinly, without the unnecessary pressure of having to act as stand-in social workers and mental health nurses because those vital services have also been cut back. Police officers are clear that they are not the right people to deal with those who need complex medical intervention for serious mental illness and that the experience of being detained may add undue stress and upset for these people, making the problem worse.

In government, Labour recognised the seriousness of the problem and commissioned the Bradley report in 2009. However, after three years in government, despite taking some welcome steps, the Government have been slow to act on the report’s fundamental recommendations, leaving us with the unacceptable problem that we now face. Quite simply, we must do better—better for the police and better for those suffering with mental health issues.

As Lord Bradley’s report acknowledged, good training and support to inform police practice are vital. To that end, I welcome the police street triage team pilots, such as those operating in Newham and Birmingham, and I encourage further working between mental health professionals and the police. However, as I have said, a police officer responding to a mental health emergency will often find themselves left with no assistance. That is unacceptable for the officer, the person concerned and the general public.

Crucially, therefore, we must have a proper partnership between the police and health providers—as the hon. Member for Halesowen and Rowley Regis rightly argued and as Lord Bradley’s report also recommended—through joint training packages for mental health awareness and learning disability issues, with community support officers and police officers linking with local mental health services. Crucially, we also need to work towards moving away from the use of custody cells for those detained under section 136 to dedicated places of safety, ensuring that people suffering mental health illness are dealt with sensitively and appropriately, and are given the correct medical treatment.

Birmingham—the city I am proud to represent—is a leading example of the places of safety strategy. West Midlands police uses a mental health assessment centre at University Hospitals Birmingham, with an on-site community psychiatric nurse to carry out assessments and refer to appropriate support. Innovative local strategies such as that are welcome, leading the way with new approaches to police procedure and mental health issues. However, three years after the Bradley report, recent reports and calls from those in the police about the problem getting worse, not better, are cause for concern that not enough has been done to tackle the issue.

In conclusion, the Government need to recognise their responsibility. They urgently need to look holistically at the problem, ensuring that the right resources are available to free up the police and that people with mental health difficulties get the support they need. It is also vital that a clear, strategic framework across all Departments is put in place to help to drive and improve partnership working. I believe that policing is about more than just cutting crime, and we believe that officers should not be expected to plug the gaps in other Departments’ shortfalls—neither should those suffering from mental health issues be let down.

14:43

[The Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims (Damian Green)]

I echo the congratulations that have been given to the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) on the way in which she introduced the debate, and to my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Burstow) and my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen and Rowley Regis (James Morris), in the latter case particularly for his energetic chairmanship of the all-party mental health group. I shall start briefly with the general subject of mental health reform and then move on to the specific policing aspects of the matter. In doing so, I hope to sweep up a lot of the specific questions that have been asked during the course of this very good debate.

Mental health reform is clearly key to the wider programme of health reform, and the Government want to see mental health issues receiving parity of esteem with physical health issues. The mandate to NHS England has a specific objective

“to put mental health on a par with physical health, and close the health gap between people with mental health problems and the population as a whole.”

We have shared our developing work with the Welsh Government, as health, obviously, is devolved, and I know that they, too, are considering these matters.

As a basic principle, which has been expressed by many hon. Members on both sides of the debate, it is impossible to argue that people facing mental ill health should not have their health needs met by professionals who are able to provide appropriate support and treatment. The police are not best placed to provide that, but they may have a key role to play in identifying vulnerabilities among people with whom they come into contact.

Essentially, the police come into contact with four groups of people who may have mental health problems. First, there are people who have committed a crime, or are arrested on suspicion of committing a crime. For those people, it is essential that we strike the right balance between bringing offenders to justice and helping people get access to appropriate interventions in order to tackle factors, such as mental health problems, that may be contributing to their offending behaviour. In the second group are those who come into contact with the police because a member of the public has concerns for their safety or for the safety of others, but when no crime has been committed. In the third are people who may have been reported as missing. As the hon. Member for Bridgend pointed out, they may be elderly and have a history of dementia, or they may be people known to mental health services whose families or carers have reported them as missing. The fourth category is victims of crime or witnesses who may themselves have mental health problems and need support at every stage of the criminal justice system, as my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) pointed out.

I will go through those groups. We have heard about the review by Lord Bradley, who highlighted that a significant proportion of prisoners have some form of mental health problem. One key recommendation was that to make that contact with the criminal justice system work, we needed to put offenders in touch with treatment and other support services that can help stop their behaviour escalating into more crime. There are currently more than 50 adult and almost 40 youth liaison and diversion services working with offenders with mental health problems, substance misuse problems or learning disabilities at the earliest point of contact with the police and courts.

To answer the questions that my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam asked about what is happening next, from April 2014 we will introduce an enhanced core model across a number of selected areas. The aim is to ensure that those services can lessen health inequalities and improve justice outcomes for people who come into contact with the criminal justice system and for whom a range of complex needs are identified as factors in their offending behaviour. My right hon. Friend was right to say that a business case has been submitted to the Treasury. He asked the eternal question of when we will hear back, and I can tell him that the decision is imminent.

We also know that there is a clear link between mental health problems and deaths in custody. That is a very serious issue. Obviously, every death in police custody is a tragedy, and that is a priority matter for the Government. Work in the area is overseen by the ministerial council on deaths in custody. The council’s independent advisory panel has recently awarded a two-year research contract to the university of Greenwich, which will be working on a number of projects to consider the impact of mental health problems on deaths in custody. Those projects will cover a wide range of the issues that have been brought up in individual cases in this debate and elsewhere. That is one stream of work.

Obviously, the Independent Police Complaints Commission has a vital role to play in the investigation of deaths in custody. It must be notified of any death that occurs in police custody, and it is currently carrying out a review of how deaths in or following police custody are investigated. A progress report on the review was published in September, and the final report is due to be published early next year.

Although that is one group of people affected, most of the debate has rightly involved another group with whom the police regularly come into contact: people suffering from mental ill health who have not committed and are not suspected of committing any crime. There may be concerns for their safety or for the safety of others, and they may need to be detained in a place of safety for that reason. However, all too often, those people, who are ill, find themselves in police stations. Many contributors to the debate made that point.

Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary’s report on the use of police cells as a place of safety for individuals detained under section 136 of the Mental Health Act found that in a number of areas, the use of police cells remained unacceptably high. Again, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam made that point. We know that during 2012-13, almost 8,000 section 136 orders were made for which a police station was the place of safety. As has been said, that is more than one third of the total number of section 136 detentions. Straightforwardly, that is unacceptable, other than in truly exceptional circumstances. Those are people who are likely to be in crisis, and they need and deserve proper care and support from people qualified to provide it.

My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary announced to the Police Federation, at its conference in May, that she was taking action, along with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health, to ensure that people with mental health problems receive the care, support and treatment that they need, and that police officers are freed up to do their job of fighting and preventing crime. That work has made significant progress. The most visible sign of it will come shortly when the concordat, which has been agreed by almost 30 national organisations, agencies and Departments, is published early in the new year. A lot of work has gone on between the Home Office and Health Ministers on this matter—that relates to a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston). I am happy to assure her that I have been working closely with my hon. Friend the Minister of State at the Department of Health, who is responsible for care and support and has overall responsibility for mental health policy.

The concordat will be an extremely important document in taking us forward. It will provide national leadership by setting out the standard of response that people suffering mental health crises and requiring urgent care should expect, and key principles around which local health and criminal justice partners should be organised. It will leave agencies in both the criminal justice and health fields in no doubt about what is expected of them.

There has been a lot of talk about places of safety. I know that interim arrangements have been made in North Yorkshire—the only police force area without a single facility at the time of the Home Secretary’s announcement—and that health-based places of safety will open in York and Scarborough early next year.

The hon. Member for Bridgend asked about exclusion criteria. The concordat will state that people suffering a mental health crisis should be supported in a place of safety, and that there should be no automatic criteria that exclude individuals, although their safety and the safety of others is the paramount consideration. She and others, including my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen and Rowley Regis, mentioned the street triage pilots, which have obviously been extremely beneficial. The pilot by Sussex police went live on 16 October and other forces are having their launches in December. West Midlands police is moving along with this, and so is the Metropolitan police. Rather than all the pilots coming to an end at once, and there then being an assessment and then something else happening, what seems to be happening is that other areas are picking up the benefits and expanding the system. I am conscious that it is being expanded in the east midlands as well.

The point has been made that too often, the police end up transporting people who ought to be transported by ambulance. The Association of Ambulance Chief Executives is drawing up a national protocol on the transportation of people in mental health crisis, which I hope will act as a catalyst for wider change and improvements.

My hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen and Rowley Regis made a pertinent point about the need for a review of the operation of sections 135 and 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983. Options for a review of those sections are currently being examined, and I expect that work to get under way this financial year.

There has been much mention of children in the debate. The practice of routinely holding in police custody children in a state of mental distress is, of course, unacceptable. Again, that will be dealt with in the coming concordat. Obviously, I take the point that young people and children are central among all the groups of people for whom it is inappropriate that they should find themselves in a police cell in the middle of the night during a mental health crisis. That is one of the changes that we need to see.

There was a request from the hon. Member for Bridgend for better data collection. The College of Policing, which, incidentally, will be doing much of the training work that the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), asked for, recognises the important issues surrounding mental ill health and policing. In its short period in existence, it has already held an awareness event with deputy chief constables. They have agreed on the need not just for clearer guidance about the use of restraint—again, I take the point made throughout the debate about the difference between mental health restraint and police restraint—but for better capture of data and evidence about the operational demands on police. The college now has a national group working to take that forward.

The third group that I mentioned was missing people. It is estimated that four out of every five adults who go missing are experiencing a mental health problem when they disappear. If those people have dementia, they may be frightened, be unable to find their way home or exhibit aggression. The police will often be the first port of call when someone goes missing, so in responding to such calls, the police need to work closely with health services and other agencies to ensure that people can be safely transferred to the most appropriate place.

Our missing children and adults strategy highlights the importance of local areas considering whether they need to be doing more to protect children and vulnerable adults who go missing, and provides a framework for them to do that. The move to bring together the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre and the UK Missing Persons Bureau in the National Crime Agency will result in improved integrated working by law enforcement across the UK, including missing persons investigations.

The last group that I mentioned was victims and witnesses. The new victims’ code, which will be implemented the week after next, will ensure enhanced support at every stage of the criminal justice system, including a new entitlement to ask that special measures be used in court and to be provided with information about the support that registered intermediaries can provide.

As the usual gateway to the criminal justice system, the police will have a duty to conduct an early needs assessment to identify victims who may be particularly vulnerable—including those with mental health issues—and therefore eligible for enhanced services. Such victims will be advised of the availability of pre-trial therapy, and access to such therapy will be facilitated if needed.

We are legislating to provide police and crime commissioners with the power to commission support services for victims of crime. We intend that, from October next year, the majority of emotional and practical support services for victims of crime will be commissioned locally by PCCs rather by than central Government. PCCs are well placed to consult, and identify the needs of, victims in their local area and to determine how best to meet those needs.

Responding to people with mental health problems is not something that any agency or organisation can do alone. In many areas, PCCs are already playing a pivotal role in encouraging agencies to come together to address the issue. The work that I have talked about highlights the importance of joint working nationally and locally in order to make a real difference.

It is obvious that the police have, and will continue to have, a key role in dealing with mental health issues as they arise. They need to be adequately trained to identify vulnerabilities and behaviours that require further intervention, but they are not and cannot replace health professionals. Both types of professionals should be left to do the job that they are best at doing and trained to do, because that, in the end, will be the best response for mental health patients themselves.

14:58

[Mrs Moon]

I thank you, Mr Brady, for your excellent chairmanship throughout the debate. I also thank my co-sponsors of the debate, because no one could have had better co-sponsors with greater gravitas or greater recognition on both sides of the House for the work that they do in this area. It is extremely pleasant to see in the Chamber at the end of the debate the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker), who has also played a huge part in raising mental health issues in the House.

This is a time of consensus. There is cross-party agreement that we must move forward. We all recognise that the police, the voluntary services, the health service and, most importantly, people who suffer from mental ill health want recognition that it is time for change and for a review of the use of section 136 powers for the 21st century.

I thank the other hon. Members who have taken part in the debate. The hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) demonstrated her insight into issues involving rural areas and children, and the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) paid particular attention to military matters. We all look forward to the concordat being published in the new year. Let us hope that between us, across the House, we can ensure that people who suffer mental ill health have the service that they desire and deserve.

Retail and the High Street

Thursday 28th November 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Charles Walker in the Chair]

15:00

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker. I am pleased, together with the hon. Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson), to have secured the debate. As co-chair and vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on retail, we understand that thriving town centres and high streets are the living face of our communities and vital to their economic and social well-being. Town centres influence how people see, experience and relate to their local areas. They are, and always have been, places where we re-affirm our place in our communities by meeting and talking to each other. The familiarity of the high street can give us a sense of belonging.

Retail is the building block of our high street. More than 3 million people—more than one in 10 UK workers—are employed in retail. In my constituency, retail is by far the largest private provider, and it is responsible for more than a quarter of all jobs. There are many important issues facing the high street, such as employment, retail skills, business rates and rents, finance for small businesses, car parking and town centre management.

Although I do not underestimate the seriousness of those issues, my debate will have a slightly different focus. The visibility of the high number of empty shops scarring our town centres, with one in seven shops empty nationally and one in five empty in the north-west, can give us the impression that our high streets are slowly shutting down. I do not believe that the situation heralds the final demise of the high street, but it demonstrates the extent of the challenge faced by the private and the public sectors to reinvigorate that public space.

The biggest challenge is the impact of online shopping and developing mobile technology. I see that as an opportunity for the public and private sectors to harness those revolutionary technological changes and bring together the physical with the digital to provide more exciting and unique community spaces.

Online sales are set to account for more than a quarter of all retail sales by 2020, and it is predicted that 4,000 retail stores will be lost by 2015. The latest figures from the British Retail Consortium show that in October, online sales of non-food products reached a new record rate of 18.3%. M-commerce grew by a staggering 300% last year alone, and it will rise further. Already, 72% of us own smartphones, according to research by Deloitte, and that will only increase.

Remember the old days, not long ago, when there was only one way to shop? We walked down the high street and into the shop we wanted, spotted the item that we wanted to purchase, bought it and carried it home. With mobile phones, we can now go into a shopping centre, examine goods, scan barcodes, compare goods online, read reviews and buy either in store or online. Developing mobile technology means that in the future, we will also receive real-time, tailor-made messages from companies about myriad offers and discounts in nearby shops.

The thousands of empty shops up and down the country cannot all go back to being traditional shops. As a result of the impact of mobile technology, future town centres will no longer simply be about physical shopping; they will be about socialising, entertainment services and cultural events. That was highlighted by both the Portas report and the Grimsey report.

Many stores are responding to new technology by bringing together online services with physical shops. Many businesses are equipping their staff with iPads or installing kiosks to allow for easy in-store customer ordering. A good example of the bringing together of the physical and the digital is Amazon’s introduction of collection lockers on the high street, which allow people to collect their orders rather than waiting for deliveries. eBay has set up a pilot system allowing “click and collect” orders to be picked up at Argos outlets. John Lewis has already launched a service that allows customers to collect their order from one of 1,500 local Collect+ shops, so customers start their shopping journey online and finish it in the town centre, which creates additional footfall.

Many shops already have free wi-fi for tailored marketing, which also allows shoppers to read detailed reviews and compare prices—something that 33% of smartphone users are already doing. Apps or scanable QR codes and barcodes help stores to target shoppers for special deals and extra branded content on their mobile devices as they browse the shop. QR codes on shop windows can divert custom to a website outside normal opening hours, which is particularly useful for a small shop.

Mobile technology is already transforming our high street, but let us try to imagine what the high street of the future might look like. In Spain, people can already use phone identification to check in to their local high street, after which a host of real-time events and offers flash up on their smartphone to alert them to what is happening there and then. Such technology can even direct people to a free parking space, and Westminster is already pioneering a new app for that. In years to come, we will also see many stockless shops, which aim to sell their brand. In such shops, customers will sit on sofas and view new collections through high-definition touchable holograms, which allow them to feel the texture of a fabric and have an item delivered to their home immediately.

Future technology will identify people from an on-street face recognition account that they can opt into, which will alert key shops and services to the fact that an individual is coming, to allow them to prepare a tailored offer in store. That means that we will receive tailor-made messages and offers as we walk down the high street. Things that seemed ridiculously futuristic a short time ago will be here soon, such as Google Glass, a head-computer worn like glasses, which an individual can speak to. It will project images and information on to the glass, and will function like an interactive search engine. It is difficult to predict the effect of such technological changes on consumer behaviour, but we must understand how transformational they will be.

I have already mentioned the Portas and Grimsey reviews. I think it is unfortunate that they seem to be in conflict with each other, because essentially they both say the same thing about innovation and partnerships. Stockport is a Portas pilot. Our pilot is based on regeneration of our market and Underbank, and it is creative industry-led. It is fair to say that it has been a bumpy ride, but that is what pilots are about. It has illustrated the difficulties faced when two very different cultures—public and private—try to work together. The good news is that footfall is up in the markets, new shops are opening and a unique Stockport brand is emerging.

The pilot demonstrated that we need a different kind of public-private partnership to support regeneration projects based on small retailers and markets. Such projects should always have a business plan based on hard evidence and proper analysis of strengths and weaknesses, to arrive at a unique high street offer for a particular town. If public money is to be spent on business rate relief, buying and letting property to preferred leaseholders, transferring public services to empty shops or converting empty shops to residential use, we need to see value for that money, especially as resources will become increasingly scarce. I would like the Minister to do what he can to spread the evidence from the Portas pilots and similar innovative schemes across the country, to provide local councils with information that will help them develop business plans for their high street. We do not want to be constantly reinventing the wheel.

In Stockport, I am conducting a shopping survey of people who live near the town centre. It is clear that the majority of them use the town centre for small shopping trips, up to five times a week in some cases, during which they also go to the bank or the post office or stop for a cup of coffee. That provides important footfall for the town centre.

[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

The hon. Lady makes a strong case, and I have listened intently to her contribution. I should declare an interest, because before I was elected to this place, I did quite a large amount of work in retail development and have retained a share in it.

One thing I am concerned about is that we need to have an impact on local car parking, because we need to encourage people physically to come into the urban conurbations and city centres. If car parking is expensive, as it increasingly is in my constituency, people will be driven away, and they will end up just using technology and failing to visit town centres.

[Ann Coffey]

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. The issue comes up again and again—indeed, it came up in the shopping survey I did. If councils are developing business plans, they also need to take into account the impact of their car-parking charges and whether those will attract shoppers to their town centres, rather than drive them somewhere else. That is an important part of any business plan. Converting empty shops to residential use and into shop fronts for public services seems a good plan, because it will encourage people to shop in the town centre. The presence of banks and post offices is also important in creating footfall—a point made by the Association of Convenience Stores.

The growth of online shopping has weakened many out-of-town large-format stores, and, as a result, there has been renewed interest in the convenience format, with a return to smaller, more frequent shopping trips. That could benefit towns such as Stockport.

In our town, there are many new independent shops. It is good to see them exploring ways of working together and of using the internet and social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, to support their bricks-and-mortar shops. I was talking to a Stockport business that already operates an online store through ASOS Marketplace, which is part of the ASOS fashion retail site. However, independent retailers across the country report that they are struggling to compete with major internet retailers, as they lack the funds on their own for large-scale online marketing and websites to compete with Amazon and eBay.

An interesting response is new websites for independent retailers such as myhigh.st, which is supported by the British Independent Retailers Association. Target 200 is an innovative e-commerce network that gives independent shopkeepers the chance to join together to sell their products online. It also gives towns a platform to showcase what is happening in their high streets. Together with “click and collect” and an independent shops loyalty programme, it enables shoppers to buy online, while encouraging visits in person.

Such innovation may be the way forward for Stockport, bringing an online presence together with the town’s physical shops. In an affordable way, that will give independent retailers additional income through online sales, while showcasing Stockport’s bigger retail shops, its markets—including its specialist markets—and its cultural and heritage attractions. That will encourage more people to visit and shop in the town.

With all the discussion about the demise of the high street, I am really concerned that opportunities are being missed. It is important that councils and businesses join together to use the exciting opportunities offered by mobile technology to transform the delivery of private goods and public services on our high streets, turning them into the exciting community spaces of the future.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

Order. If colleagues could limit their speeches to around eight minutes, everybody should get in.

15:13

[Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under you, Mr Walker. It is an absolute pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey), who, with me, co-sponsored the debate. She delivered a fantastic speech; not only is she a real champion of the high street, but, with all her talk of the future and what the high street needs, she is a presenter in the making should “Tomorrow’s World” ever be re-launched.

I am a proud retail geek. My parents ran a retail shop, so I spent many hours after school behind the shop counter—I had my very own “Open All Hours” experiences as I was growing up. I am the new co-chair of the all-party group on retail, alongside the hon. Member for Stockport. I am also the vice-chair of the all-party group on town centres.

Town centre regeneration is a major issue in the Swindon area. We were on the cusp of major regeneration in 2007-08, but as the economy crashed, I am afraid the developers went to the wall. However, we are very much at the front of the queue for the next wave of regeneration. Regent Circus is taking shape by the day, and it will have a new cinema and a number of eateries, including Nandos. Judging by my postbag, that is exciting huge numbers of people. Those things will be here this time next year, which is a big boost, especially for a town that can boast 300,000 shoppers within 20 minutes of it and 3 million within an hour. That is one reason why we were able to secure £65 million of private sector investment to rebuild the legendary Oasis leisure centre—I am sure Members have all gone there with their bathing costumes. I have set up a retail forum, and I regularly visit lots of shops and retailers. This is a key interest for me.

I am an unashamed Mary Portas fan. I know she is a controversial figure and divides public opinion, but I think she shone a light on not only some serious issues and challenges, but some opportunities for the high street. Sometimes we need someone who is straight talking to come in and shake things up. There was almost a collective acceptance of defeat, and there was no reason for that, because, as Mary Portas has shown, there is so much that can be done to help the high street.

As the hon. Lady said, the high street is important. About 11% of the country’s work force are employed in retail. There is a lot of flexible working, which suits a lot of people. Often, people’s first job is in retail. My first job was at Starrs newsagents, although, regrettably, I had to leave because I was spending more than I was being paid on stuff I did not need, because I was always staring at it and putting it on the shelves. So, for no reason other than that I could not afford to work there any more, I had to end my newsagent career.

Local authorities have a key part to play. Many areas have an opportunity to pursue redevelopment, but local authorities must understand that they need to be flexible. There are towns where there are historic reasons why certain buildings need to be protected, but a lot of towns need to accept that when a developer says the whole town centre needs to turn on its axis by 5°, that might make all the difference. The success of supermarkets and out-of-town shopping centres comes from the fact that they have built environments that attract customers, and town centres need to replicate that.

Although it is important to attract the brand names and the anchor stores to the high street, towns must have space for the small independent shops that create character and give people an extra reason to come off the motorway at that junction to visit that town centre, rather than those further down the motorway.

We have talked about parking. I was proud that the Mary Portas review highlighted Swindon for best practice. Despite challenging financial times, we managed to cut car-parking charges. We then saw a 10% increase in footfall, following five to 10 years of decreases. Suddenly, cutting charges to £2 for four hours led to a 10% increase and, crucially, to a much longer dwell time. Previously, people were coming in to do their banking and then leaving. After the change, they came to do their banking, visited a café and, once they had refuelled, they would go and spend money on shopping, which is great for local business.

[Oliver Colvile]

The other issue is making sure that there are other attractions so that people use town centres. This is also about theatre, museums and other activities, which are part of people’s experience of going into towns and doing their shopping.

[Justin Tomlinson]

I thank my hon. Friend for that brilliant contribution, which was spot on. I will come to the night-time economy in a short while.

A number of people will no doubt talk about business rates, and I do not want to enter into a big debate about them ahead of the autumn statement. However, we need to recognise that the world is changing. The internet will continue to grow, and the way customers shop will change. Business rates need to recognise those changes. The issue is not all about traditional bricks and mortar, and a fair system should recognise that.

The other area where local authorities and, arguably, the Government can go a bit further is super-BIDs—business improvement districts—which are fantastic. I work with InSwindon and Forward Swindon, and they do a great job. We also have the McArthurGlen outlet village, which is a huge success; it is about to have its umpteenth expansion and employs about 900 people. A queue of retailers is trying to come in. If retailers do not trade well in the centre, they are removed. How many high streets can say that?

The key to the centre’s success is twofold. First, it has fantastic car parking, which is a no-brainer. Secondly, there is a single point of contact. If a retailer is thinking of going there, they know who to speak to. If they want to go to a town centre, do they speak to the local authority, the BID company or the landlords? There are all sorts of different things, and there is a lot of confusion. I would love to see a lot more of our towns give the BID companies full control of the town centre so that they get on with things—whether that is street cleaning, entertainment or planning. That would help to transform huge swathes of our town centres.

Let me now turn away from what the Government can do. Often the temptation is to say that we can do everything, but retailers actually have a lot to do, as Mary Portas highlighted. Retailers must accept that they have to adapt to changing customer expectations, whether that involves the growth of the internet or the growth of supermarkets and out-of-town shopping centres. Customer service is crucial. Too many retailers simply took customers for granted.

I saw that in my parents’ shops when I was growing up. My parents always took time to thank customers. If the normal closing time was half-past 5 but a customer who came in after work had not finished shopping by that time, they did not shut; they kept going while there was someone there. All too often, and particularly in some chains, that attitude is lacking. In any Mary Portas television programme, that is always the first thing to be highlighted. Customers will vote with their feet. If they get bad service, they go away.

Offering something different is another thing to consider. We have Bloomfields deli in Highworth. Everyone said that it was mad to open it—“The supermarkets own the world; you have no chance of surviving”—but it offered innovative products that could not be found in the supermarket, and good quality. The shop sells fine foods and the staff will wrap things up and put them in hampers. The Christmas deluge of business, allowing the deli to sell products that it could not otherwise, is about to start, and that is all because of going the extra mile.

Shops have to think about opening hours, because the internet is 24/7. Amazon is a big competitor and will deliver overnight; so why not deliver the same day? My mother delivered things: it was a wool shop, so there were a lot of older customers, and on the way home she would drop things off to some of those would could not get in. She did it because it brought in extra business. John Lewis is a good example of the chain stores that have embraced the multi-channel approach. About 40% of its business is now click and collect.

The final element of what I am talking about is the role of young people, and encouraging them to start in retailing. The number of young people going to the high street has dropped dramatically. When I was growing up, the town centre was the place where young people went, by default, to buy music or computer games, to socialise and, when they got old enough, to take advantage of the night-time economy. Nowadays, there is a generation of young people who never set foot in the town centre because they are the ones who embrace internet and out-of-town shopping the most. We must get the mix right, as the hon. Member for Stockport said.

We must encourage young entrepreneurs to think about retail. We run entrepreneur challenges in schools, which I have just talked about in the business debate in the main Chamber. I am talking about providing real, tangible experience in a retail environment. I did that in the Blunsdon market. The young people run a market stall and the mentors talk to the successful businesses afterwards and explain, “If, after you finish college, you want to do this, we can talk to landlords and get you a space in a unit, or you can come back to the market.” From small acorns, businesses grow. All big businesses today were small businesses once, and young people can be the best retailers, because they will challenge convention. We should do more to champion that.

15:22

[Mr Alan Campbell (Tynemouth) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey) and the hon. Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) on securing this important debate. It is a timely one, given the number of retailers who will be hoping to do very well in the run-up to Christmas to see whether they can remain on the high street.

On a positive note, I should say that a lot of hard work goes on in town centres and high streets to make sure that retail is successful and has a secure future. The North Shields chamber of trade and commerce and Whitley Bay chamber of trade constantly promote the interests of their members but also of the town as a whole. Newspapers such as The Journal in Newcastle and the News Guardian in my constituency encourage people to shop locally and on the high street. I hope they will also encourage them to get behind small business Saturday on 7 December.

Perhaps most importantly, to pick up on the point made by the hon. Member for North Swindon, many young people and women seem to be setting up retail outlets in places such as Park View in Whitley Bay. They harness new technology and come up with new and innovative ways to make it an interesting place to visit, spend time and shop.

Many retailers, including many small independents, have a difficult struggle to survive day to day. I want to focus on one aspect of a complex group of issues, which has not yet been covered in the debate: the importance of making high streets safe to visit and of enabling retailers to trade without suffering losses through criminality, which can in extreme cases jeopardise their businesses.

The British Retail Consortium survey of December 2012 reported that the cost of retail crime in 2011-12 was about £1.6 billion, 83% of which was theft involving customers. Half that goes undetected. There is, anecdotally, concern about the possibility that almost three decades of diminishing crime rates may be levelling out—and may begin to rise. I hope that that does not happen.

I am told that in 30 of the police force areas there is evidence that crime—particularly acquisitive crime, and, within that category, particularly shoplifting—is increasing. There is a danger of an overall rise in crime. I hope we shall not return to what was traditionally viewed as the link between recession and crime—albeit with something of a lag. I accept that the annual crime figures may not yet show that effect, but I am told that over a period of six to nine months a worrying picture has been emerging.

Retailers are on the front line. Newsagents and general stores stock perhaps the most transportable and resellable goods of all: alcohol and tobacco. Shoplifting is not a victimless crime. It adds to the retailer’s business costs, as well as to customers’ costs at a time when the cost of living is rising. Often, independent retailers are the hardest hit, if not because of the sheer volume of the problem, then because of the effect on their business costs.

The Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill is currently being considered, and there has been concern about the definition of low-value shoplifting as being when the value of the stolen goods does not exceed £200. That is a lot of money to many independent stores. There is a perception, and even greater concern, that people arrested for shoplifting are sometimes being cautioned again and again, and that any recompense for the retailer is missing. I know that that is not the Minister’s area of responsibility, but I ask him to draw it to the attention of his ministerial colleagues.

Some retailers I speak to have been asking whether the Government intend to review the guidance on shoplifting. We read almost daily about people stealing household goods—including, increasingly, food. Sometimes that is, obviously, to feed a family. There could be numerous reasons for what is happening, such as benefit changes, worklessness or just criminality. However, it could also be part of organised crime, and, as far as I am concerned, a crime is a crime.

The police and courts need appropriate and proportionate penalties to be available, and £200 is an awful lot of money to a shopkeeper. Organised crime gang members may individually steal goods worth less than £200, but that can hardly be described as low-level crime; and it is hardly something that warrants a caution. I know from experience that there are many good schemes for combating high street, and particularly retail, crime. Many traders in Whitley Bay are linked by a radio system, and they have a good relationship with the police. However, they keep saying, “We are doing our bit; can you make sure that, should people steal from us, the penalties will be proportionate?”

I want to end on a slightly different aspect of the same issue: the unfortunate and all too frequent verbal abuse and threats of violence towards retail staff. I draw the House’s attention to the Freedom from Fear campaign of the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, which focuses on violence against shop workers. It would be nice if the Minister said something in support of that campaign and of those who work in retail.

15:28

[Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)]

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker. I join others in congratulating my colleagues, the hon. Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey) and my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson), on securing this timely debate.

We do not need surveys or focus groups to establish that high streets are popular with our constituents, whose natural instincts support a thriving high street. I suspect that is even more true in some of our smaller market towns. High streets in towns such as Barton-upon-Humber in my constituency, which has a good mix of independent shops, are certainly highly valued by local people. I am pleased to say that Cleethorpes itself has a thriving shopping area, in the appropriately named High street and down St Peter’s avenue, with a good mix of shops that is well valued by the local community.

As has already been suggested, the retail environment is changing dramatically. Too many attempts are made to preserve the high street scene and ignore the fact that shopping habits have changed due to the internet and what almost amounts in some cases to the migration of the town centre to a different location on the edge of town or urban retail parks. We have all witnessed what starts simply as an edge-of-town supermarket expand until a cluster of other retail units form around it; in a short space of time, we have a competing town centre or high street. Whether or not those changes are for the better, we cannot alter the fact that the customer has decided that they are here to stay.

The Portas review was established and, as I stated in previous debates, I see little in it that does anything more than apply a sticking plaster to a gaping wound. I do not blame the Government for using a celebrity to front the review. Sometimes celebrities can draw more attention to issues than any politician or businessman can. To be fair to Mary Portas, her report recognises that retailers need fewer shops and recognises the onward march of the supermarkets, which is of course the main reason why we need fewer retail units. She is half right when she states:

“We have sacrificed communities for convenience.”

I suggest that in most cases the communities are still there, but they shop elsewhere. I look back to my early childhood in Fuller street in Cleethorpes. It still exists and the same 80 or 90 houses are still occupied, but Mr Marrows, the grocer down the street, and Mr Nocton, the butcher round the corner, along with the baker, the hardware shop and many others, have long disappeared.

Like every town in the country, Cleethorpes simply has too many retail units. Nocton’s butchers stood on Grimsby road, which is the main road between Grimsby and the adjoining town of Cleethorpes. It is also the main entrance to the resort of Cleethorpes, and the many bricked-up, derelict properties do not enhance the reputation of what I am pleased to say is still a thriving resort. Property values and rents are low. Many sole traders are surviving without necessarily thriving. Whether the property owners are the traders themselves, a local landlord or indeed an absentee landlord, an incentive is needed to convert many of the now empty retail units to residential use. With the powers granted to local authorities by the Government’s localism agenda, councils have sufficient powers in their armouries to embark on regeneration schemes. The reality is that very little is happening. Parades of shops up and down the land scar the communities they once served. We must quickly embark on schemes that can revitalise such areas.

In the North East Lincolnshire council area, which is one of the councils that serves my constituency, schemes to renovate empty houses already exist, but they only scratch the surface. This Government and previous Governments have poured many millions into various initiatives that, as I said earlier, only apply an Elastoplast to a wound. We need initiatives that perhaps allow local authorities to spend that sort of money on compulsory purchase, rather than repave vast areas or patch up one little area. I have served on a local authority, so I know how difficult compulsory purchase is to achieve. It often takes two, three or more years to accomplish for a relatively small group of properties, and we need to make it easier. The resources spent on various initiatives would be better spent on buying up properties. Councils could then sell them at a knock-down price—perhaps even give them away—with a compulsory brief that whoever purchased them had to convert them or use them for a particular scheme.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a number of important points about the powers local authorities have to shape their areas. Does he accept that recent Government changes deregulating permitted development make it much more difficult for local authorities to influence what happens on the high street?

[Martin Vickers]

I am afraid that I do not agree with the hon. Lady. I am very much one for freeing up the ability of councils to put together plans, schemes and initiatives of the sort I mentioned, which, although they may need central funding to kick-start them, are bottom-up schemes. I cannot agree with her.

Much is made of car parking charges. I agree that in an ideal world we would not have them—my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) will refer to the successful schemes that North East Lincolnshire council has introduced—but getting rid of charges is not a panacea. I recall mentioning in a similar debate that I was the councillor on North East Lincolnshire council responsible for environmental services, including car parking. We discussed it time and time again and had various initiatives to help with Christmas shopping and the like, but the reality is that we got £1.25 million in income from car parking charges. If a council is providing services elsewhere, it simply cannot at a stroke say, “We’ll do away with that £1 million.” It is a problem.

Grimsby town centre, the main shopping centre that serves my constituency, has a successful and thriving shopping centre, Freshney Place, which charges. People go there in their thousands, often at the expense of going to other areas that do not charge. If the offer is right, people do not mind paying a modest amount for parking. I can see that I have just exceeded my eight minutes, so I will conclude there and hand over.

[Mr Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

I intend to call the wind-ups at six minutes past four and give each of the Front Benchers 11 minutes. Ms Coffey can have two minutes at the end.

15:37

[Mary Macleod (Brentford and Isleworth) (Con)]

I want to make a few brief remarks. I thank the hon. Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey) and my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) for securing the debate, because this issue is important to all of us. We all have local communities in our constituencies, and we want them to thrive and our traders to succeed. We want independent traders, of which there are fewer and fewer, to be a key part of that. The debate is critical because it is about communities, which are usually created with shopping centres and high streets at their centre. High streets can help to create stronger communities, and we want to ensure that they can continue to do so. My first two jobs were in shops in Scotland, so the topic is close to my heart.

The debate is topical, given that we are coming to the Christmas period and a lot of shops and traders are feeling nervous about the next few weeks. As has been mentioned, more people are shopping online and out of town. In London, big chains are pushing up rents. My constituency is in west London. People think of London as a city, but apart from the inner city, London is made up of little villages. I have several specific high streets in my constituency that I look at in particular: Chiswick high road; High street in Brentford; High street in Hounslow; South street in Isleworth; Thornbury road in Osterley; and London road.

The Mayor of London has taken this issue on as a high priority. Recently, two of my high streets have received £4.8 million in support from the Mayor’s outer London fund. That has helped in creating a town centre manager, markets, Christmas lights—any initiative that would bring people to the high street and make it a focal point for people to shop and go to the restaurants there. A lot has been done. Of course, we have heard already about the Portas review. In fact, Mary Portas opened a shop on my local high street, Living and Giving, which is a shop for Save the Children—it is a charity shop on Chiswick High road. Some interesting points came out of that review, and the pilots have been set up. Also, in London after the summer of unrest and riots that we had, there is a high street innovation fund, and a lot has been done to encourage local markets. A lot has been done in that way, and the Government have done a lot to help to support small businesses, as many of us were saying earlier today in the main Chamber.

There are some things we have tried to do locally. A new market has been set up in Brentford on Sundays, to which lots of high quality traders have been coming, including new traders. A market is a great way in for someone who wants to start a business. Also, I have a regular forum with my traders in Chiswick to hear their concerns and try to do something about them. I certainly keep in touch with what is happening with the regeneration and transformation of two of my bigger high streets, in Brentford and Hounslow, which needed a lot of work done to them.

We have started to provide free parking for 30 minutes in some areas. I have been pushing my borough to extend that scheme right across the borough—my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon talked about, I think, a 10% increase in trade from such a scheme. That is the right way to go, and is hopefully something that will be implemented right across the borough as soon as possible, because it will certainly encourage people to come to the local high street, as opposed to going out of town. We are also looking at business improvement districts. We do not have any in my part of west London at the moment, but there are many across London and we want to try to build on those.

When I speak to my traders, including on the high street, they talk about business rates—especially in London, with its high rateable values. Ideally, I would like the Minister’s support when I go and speak to the Prime Minister next week about what we do about business rates, because I would like a more fundamental reform of them. Traders have also asked me where they can go for help. Many of our traders try going to their local councillor or perhaps reaching out to a range of people, but who is responsible for our traders on the high street? Who looks after their concerns? As MPs, we have our constituents, and I have said to my local traders that I will absolutely help to represent their interests and listen to their concerns, because they are a core part of the local community.

Some of the things we are looking forward to include small business Saturday on 7 December, when a lot of activities will be taking place then across my constituency. That has helped to create a real sense of community, which is really important. Something we are seeing a lot of in London is empty shops. I would like to encourage the use of pop-up shops, which are another way for new entrepreneurs to test out their markets, starting small and growing from that. The more we can do to encourage pop-up shops as a starting-point, the better.

When it comes to local authorities, we want to encourage people to shop on the high street; therefore, there must be real diversity there. In some of my local areas we have seen a whole stream of estate agents or charity shops, but what we want is a good mix, because that is what will get people to come to the high street. When I go down Turnham Green terrace in Chiswick, it is wonderful to see a queue outside my butchers, Macken Brothers, on a Saturday. That just goes to show that if small traders on the high street are good and people know about them, they can be hugely successful. Some of the best moments for me—for example, Devonshire road street parties—have been where the high streets have got together and created events to improve the sense of community and to get shoppers to come their streets. They have been absolutely superb.

The key thing for us—all hon. Friends and hon. Members here today—is: what needs to be done to help the high street and help local traders to thrive? If there is more that the Government can do to support them—whether through taxation or business rates, encouraging flexibility on parking and diversity, or looking at how we use empty shops and encourage more pop-up shops—that will be a step in the right direction.

[Mr Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

Hon. Members are being very self-limiting—very well-behaved.

15:45

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Walker, for calling me to speak. I will try to be as good as my colleagues have been.

Action for Market Towns is a national charity and the representative body committed to the vitality and viability of market towns across the country, with membership from such towns all across Britain. After a highly selective process, this year my constituency was chosen as the location for its annual conference, earlier this month. Congleton was chosen as an exemplary model of good and joint working of all five town partnerships in my constituency—Alsager, Congleton, Homes Chapel, Sandbach and Middlewich. They are not competing against one other, but supporting each other to maintain vibrant local communities, including their high streets. I spoke at the conference and afterwards conducted a Q and A session with the delegates. I want to bring back to this debate and to the Minister some of the comments that delegates made about what more the Government could do to help to boost market towns and other smaller communities, with a particular emphasis, of course, on the high street.

One of the first points that delegates made was that local enterprise partnerships could offer more opportunity to help to diversify town centres, as part of their wider local economic growth strategies. However, the feeling was that LEPs tend to focus on supporting big business, not on places, and that LEPs perhaps need to focus more on supporting market towns or working with groups of smaller businesses. The question to the Minister, therefore, is: how can individual towns and their businesses influence and access LEP funds more effectively? Is there perhaps a need or an opportunity for Government to inform LEP strategy development at national and local level, to ensure that LEPs listen to and respond effectively to community representatives, including those representing smaller retailers?

My second point relates to developing the policy for multi-purpose town centres. I think we all acknowledge the need for town centres to diversify, so that they can provide retail alongside community services and play a stronger leisure, culture and amenity role. There is also an acceptance of the potential to deliver that through neighbourhood planning. There is the future high streets forum, but comment was made that although this holistic view of town centres is accepted, it does not seem to be proportionately represented on the forum. I have looked at the proportion of representatives on the forum, and there certainly seems to be a preponderance of representatives from big business and big retailers, with relatively few representing the smaller high street retailers. The question is: are there real champions of small businesses to make their voices and views heard on the future high streets forum, providing an holistic view of multi-purpose and sustainable town centres to be delivered through localism and the right to plan or community rights? Is the balance right on that forum to ensure that this will happen?

Thirdly, there is the issue of the reuse of public assets in towns. Maintenance of public services and employment in and around town centres is, as we know, vital to local well-being and prosperity. However, there is concern that empty public buildings could be made more readily available by authorities for social and community enterprises, perhaps at below market value if they are lying empty. That was something that the delegates really wanted me to draw to the attention of the Minister. Perhaps wider local economic benefit could be taken into account in calculating best value—using the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012, for example—in the sale and reuse of such public assets in and around town centres. How can we achieve this?

I wish to touching briefly on charity shops. Their role in the vibrancy of town centres was something of a controversial subject among the delegates, perhaps shrouded in anecdote. It was suggested that more informed research was needed. Although there are negative aspects, including rate relief—especially relating to the sale of new products—and the clustering of charity shops in prime retail locations, on the positive side, charities and social enterprises occupy empty units, diversify town centres and, in some instances, provide a broad range of services beyond retail. I have been involved for several years in a charity shop in Widnes that occupies a former empty jeweller’s shop. At the back of the town centre, we provide drug addiction advice, debt advice, pregnancy counselling and free legal aid. To inform the work of the future high streets forum, what objective research is undertaken to understand and inform policy and good practice on the impact of charity shops and social enterprises on town centre vitality?

Finally, I am sure that the Minister would not want me to speak in his presence without referring to local plans, the national planning policy framework and town centres. The delegates acknowledged the potential benefit of new funding sources through the community infrastructure levy, which they welcomed, but there was strong consensus that the application of localism through neighbourhood planning and wider community rights could provide new opportunities for local businesses and community groups to determine the vitality of their town centres.

However, there were concerns that local proposals for sustainable business development were being overruled by proposals from large retailers and housing developers. I know of a situation near me in Tattenhall, west Cheshire, where a neighbourhood plan on whose creation local groups spent an enormous amount, including for a local referendum, is now being challenged through the courts by a major developer.

There is widespread concern that the continuing lack of agreed local plans leaves communities open to any development that is proposed—developments need only meet the NPPF requirements—and about the fact that town plans are being ignored when planning appeals take place. I refer the Minister once again to the plight of Sandbach, where some 500 properties will now be developed on the wrong side of the town centre, causing considerable congestion and other difficulties. Sandbach townsfolk do not object to development, but they want it in the right place. If only we could have waited until the local plan was finalised, that development would have been in the right place. What can be done to ensure that local community and business engagement in neighbourhood planning for sustainable growth is not overruled by the inconsistent application of the NPPF, and particularly by the financial resources of major developers?

From my own leadership experience as senior partner in a community law firm on the high street for almost 25 years, I know how much hard work, care and devotion go into local community life on behalf of local businesses. I want to support that, particularly in my constituency, in the years to come.

15:53

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker. I concur with colleagues who have paid tribute to the hon. Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey), my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) and the others who have helped secure this debate.

Town centres are incredibly important to my constituency, all 257 square miles of it. We have a lot of historic market towns, including Brigg, Epworth and Crowle, as well as bigger centres such as Goole. My constituency also covers part of Scunthorpe, so Scunthorpe town centre, although it is not in my constituency, is incredibly important. Like other Members, I am committed to our town centres. I spent some time working in the US many years ago, and I was staggered when I asked the people I was living with, “Where is the town centre?” and they looked at me and said, “What do you mean?” I said, “Where is it? There must be one. I’ve walked and walked until the pavement ran out”—the town was Hamilton, New Jersey. The community just did not have a town centre. I was on a street called Edinburgh street, I remember, which was pronounced “Edinburg street” in New Jersey.

At the time, the thought that town centres in many places had either closed down or simply did not exist was alien to me, but that was a number of years ago. Sadly, some of the things that have happened in the US have started to happen here, particularly since the move to out-of-town shopping centres. Maybe we have caught up with the trend, or maybe we have regressed. I do not know which, but it is definitely having an impact.

The life and future of town centres in my constituency is fairly positive. They are still the centre of most of my communities when it comes to accessing GP services, post offices or even council services. They are also a meeting place for many generations, and they provide a huge number of jobs. I concur with other Members about the importance of retail jobs. My first job at 12 was being a paperboy, but at 15, I got a job in a shoe shop, supplying Hush Puppies and Jouralle shoes to the assorted masses of what was then Humberside. Freeman Hardy Willis was the name of the company. I then got a job working at McDonald’s, which I did for five years through college and university. I understand the value of retail jobs, particularly to young people but also to those who want to work flexibly or part-time.

Our local town centres have been supported strongly by the local council. I want to highlight several examples from North Lincolnshire council that could be applied nationally and that show what can be achieved for our town centres when local authorities and town centre retailers work in partnership. When we took control of my town council in 2011, we were swift in removing parking charges in Brigg. Since then, the council has introduced free parking periods, with the strong support of the Scunthorpe Telegraph, an excellent local newspaper. We have extended free parking into Scunthorpe, and I hope we can go further. It was the previous Labour council, sadly, that imposed charges in Brigg.

The importance of those measures came home to me during the first Christmas after we removed the charges in 2011. I went to open Santa’s shack in Brigg, in one of our famous hardware stores—other options are available, of course—and the manager of the shop said to me, “You wouldn’t believe the impact the free parking period has had.” People are not fearful of being ticketed. They understand the rules, and they know that they can come into Brigg and shop for two hours, so they do not drive to an out-of-town centre on the edge of Scunthorpe or elsewhere; they come into Brigg to do their shopping. We should not underestimate the value of free parking.

Nor should we underestimate the value of reasonable parking attendants. Epworth is having a big problem, and retail businesses are struggling. Retailers have been to see me, and I have got the council to agree to review the aggressive enforcement of parking rules that is driving people out of our town centres. Free periods are a good start, but after two hours when the free period expires, parking attendants must be reasonable.

In response to a little campaign that I ran with Goole town centre, a local council of mine has managed to get free wi-fi in Goole town centre by working with Jibba Jabba, a local broadband provider based in Doncaster. It is an excellent name; those of us from the ’80s will remember “The A-Team”. Anyone who comes into Goole and logs on to the wi-fi will be greeted by a nice picture of me welcoming them to the free wi-fi service. [Interruption.] Take-up has been high; whether people repeat their visit I am not sure.

That is in the East Riding of Yorkshire part of my constituency. I took the idea to North Lincolnshire council, which has agreed to roll out wi-fi to all our town centres to support local businesses. Many of our towns, such as Epworth, have burgeoning café and food outlet environments, which I strongly support. They have said to me that having free wi-fi has been important in Goole. People come in, sit there and use it with their tablets out, and they buy an extra coffee while doing so, because they realise that they can get fast internet while enjoying their lunch or coffee break, as people do these days.

Councils must be proactive on crime. Town centre crime is a concern, particularly for small retailers. We had a bit of a spike in Epworth not so long ago. I am pleased that, working with local councillors there— Liz Redfern and David Robinson—we managed to get £45,000 out of the council to install CCTV cameras in Epworth town centre, which retailers have welcomed. We also got the local council to fund extra police community support officers there and provide two new PCSOs in the Isle of Axholme and others in parts of north Lincolnshire. Again, it is working in partnership because it understands that crime is important in respect of retail and the economy, and in making people feel safe and confident enough to come into town centres. I welcome that partnership.

There are other simple things that councils can do. We set up a body in Brigg, of which I am the chairman—I am not in control of everything in the constituency; this is not some despotic regime—called Brigg 2020, a regeneration partnership. I also chair one in Goole, called Goole Renaissance. In Brigg, we got the council to look at the street furniture and ask, “What is attractive about our town centre and what isn’t?” The battered old railings that welcome people into town do not exactly say, “This is a place to come and enjoy an afternoon”, or “Enjoy your shopping.” That is not acceptable. Simply by doing an audit of such things and getting the council to commit to replacing them, we can change the appearance of our town centres.

When councils get it—when they understand it—and when they do not see themselves as being in conflict with retailers, it can work. Sometimes, retailers say, “The council is not doing enough for us,” and sometimes the council says, “Oh, well, retailers are just complaining about parking, yet again. It’s the usual thing,” or, “They’re complaining about litter.” When we park all those traditional tussles and replace them with proper partnership working, we can achieve a great deal. We do not have a great number of empty shops in the smaller market towns in my area.

We still have a big problem in town centres, and I do not know how the Government are responding to the matter. Sadly, in the past few years, in Scunthorpe, one of the bigger town centres, Marks & Spencer has left, although it is returning to my constituency at an out-of-town unit on the edge of Scunthorpe. Although we have tried to get it into the town centre, it is not interested in that. It is difficult to know how the Government should respond to the flight away from big town centres. In the past couple of weeks, McDonald’s, of all companies, has announced that it is leaving Scunthorpe town centre, despite its being incredibly busy. It mentioned business rates, the shift of people out of town and online sales, as others have done.

I have gone 30 seconds over time, despite being self-limiting. There was much more that I wanted to say, not about various positions that I hold but about what we can do to support our town centres by working in partnership. I hope that the Government will respond to questions raised by colleagues and to my concerns about the need to continue extending small business rate relief and about our biggest stores, to ensure that there is a fair, level playing field in town centres and out of town.

[Mr Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

Order. I remind Front-Bench speakers that we will allow the Member who secured the debate two minutes at the end, so perhaps they could be self-limiting as well.

16:03

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey) and the hon. Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) for securing this debate and pay tribute to their work as joint chairs of the all-party retail group. I pay tribute to all hon. Members who have spoken passionately about their areas. I will return in a moment or two to some specific points that they raised.

The importance of high streets and retail cannot be better demonstrated than in Stockport, where, as my hon. Friend eloquently outlined, retail is a significant part of the economy and contributes a large proportion of jobs in the town. Stockport is benefiting from the reshaping of the town’s retail offer, and in a way it is forging a new identity. That is to be applauded.

I am pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Mr Campbell) mentioned the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers campaign to keep shop workers safe, because we do not talk enough about that in the House and we have to consider it when thinking about regenerating our high streets and town centres.

I am glad that most hon. Members mentioned small business Saturday on 7 December. I am sure that we are all getting behind it and supporting our small businesses. It is worth highlighting.

It is pertinent to discuss the state of our high streets. We have had a number of debates on the subject in the House recently and in the past few years. The issue will not go away, and the reason for that is clear: we are seeing a decline in the variety of businesses that make up our high streets. There are now more than twice as many betting shops in British high streets than all the cinemas, bingo halls, museums, bowling alleys and so on put together, but the situation is not inevitable. Positive interventions can be made, and we should not accept the automatic decline of our high street due to trends of online shopping and so on. We have to make the right interventions, and they must be supported by the Government, who must help the process of diversification that we know is needed.

The facts make concerning reading. At this moment, one in seven of Britain’s shops lie empty, and in some places it is one in three. Given that position, the Government should take action to support the high street, but recent data show us that, in a large number of areas, the high street revolution has failed to take off. Vacancy rates, although improving, are doing so only marginally, with a reduction from 14.2% to 14.1%.

The Government’s approach is fragmented. A number of initiatives have been mentioned. We have Portas pilots, town team partners, the future high streets forum, a high street innovation fund, the high street renewal award, a fund for business improvements districts, local enterprise partnerships, local authorities, neighbourhood plans and neighbourhood business plans. Most commentators are saying that we need a more co-ordinated approach, nationally and locally, to help our high streets.

The Government should consider more closely the advice in the Grimsey report, which in many ways echoes what was set out in the Portas review. As my hon. Friend said, that report seeks comprehensively to address the challenges facing the sector. Grimsey set an objective to repopulate high streets and town centres as community hubs, with more housing, education, arts, entertainment, business and office space, health and leisure provision and, of course, shops. He also suggested setting up a town centre commission for each town, with a defined skills base and structure, to build a 20-year vision for each town. He thought that the Government should, at least, pilot that approach. He also said that we should prepare for a wired town centre and that there should be particular support for our high streets, to enable them to embrace new technology, as my hon. Friend outlined. We are not seeing a specific enough initiative to deal with that issue.

In his foreword to his report, Grimsey said:

“We’ve seen reviews, pilots, future high street forums and more. But none of these initiatives are making much impact and there is a frustrating sense of policy being conducted in the margins. The need to grasp the nettle is bigger than ever.”

He acutely identifies the most serious challenges facing the industry, saying:

“The bigger area of concern, though, is the plight of smaller retailers. Many remain horribly stressed financially with an average rating that hovers perilously above the Company Watch warning area. The same pattern applies in the supply chain. For independent shops, a sector that the Business Secretary has previously acknowledged to be an essential part of a healthy high street, the future looks very uncertain. The fact that our analysis shows 46.6 per cent of all retailers in the UK are in the warning area, and by definition at serious risk of failure, should be a loud wakeup call to ministers”—

and to all of us. He states:

“As a check up on the health of the high street, the prognosis is not good. Over 20,000 businesses are at risk and we can expect more and more business failures”

unless action is taken.

“There are around 40,000 empty shops in the UK, and this has remained”

pretty

“constant over…three years.”

The question must be, what are local government and central Government going to do about that?

Part of the answer, undoubtedly, is to enable change of use for premises. What the Government are doing on change of use, however, is making things worse, not better. We know that the consequence of the Government’s changes, particularly those since May, has been to allow more bookies and payday lenders to set up shop on our high streets. The Government are taking away from local authorities the ability to shape what is happening on their high street and to respond to community demand, yet we know that communities want their local authorities to have more control of high street improvement.

A recent survey by Deloitte shows that 73% of people want customers to have a strong role in shaping the high street, and 47% want local authorities to be able to do that. Only 13% want landlords to be able to shape what happens on the high street, yet that is exactly what we have ended up with under this Government. Because planning permission is no longer required for many changes of use on our high street, our local authorities and communities have no ability to shape what is happening. That is the exact opposite of the approach that the hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) suggests, which is that local authorities should have powers to shape what happens on the high street, such as by having more rights to purchase properties compulsorily.

The hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) made an excellent point on local authorities using social value clauses to help, for example, local people set up start-up units—there would be more pop-up shops. That is exactly the set of uses that local authorities might want on their high street, but if it is simply left to the market to say how empty properties will be used or changed, we are not likely to get the sorts of premises that local people want.

What is likely to happen, as I witnessed when I visited Woolwich high street last week, is that in a row of 16 shops, nine will be payday loan companies or bookies. Local people told me that they are very unhappy with the situation. They said that, in the past couple of years, the council had indeed spent money on the town square but that it was being thoroughly undermined by the number of fast food outlets and so on in the area.

The last time I raised that point with the Minister, he went out and said to the media, “This is about Labour trying to say to you that you shouldn’t be able to buy a McDonald’s.” I make it clear that that is not what we are saying; we are saying that people do not want an over-saturation of a particular type of shop on their high street. As the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Mary Macleod) said, what we need is diversification on our high street. People are telling us clearly that they want independent retailers and community uses; they do not want to see one type of premises taking over the high street.

I hope the Minister will help us to understand how the Government’s approach will assist with that diversification, because I cannot see that approach operating in practice. In fact, we know from across the country that the opposite is happening. The Government could do more. The Government must urgently address change of use and the relaxation of permitted development, and they must give local authorities and communities real powers to shape their high street. That is urgent, but the Government need to do other things. They must consider the wider economy, too.

A recent report by the Centre for Cities claims that the biggest factor affecting the success or failure of our high street is the overall strength of the town or city centre’s economy, and the slow economic recovery over the past three years has really affected the high street. The Government should be doing more to address business rates, increasing rents and higher energy costs, all of which are particularly affecting small business. Again, small businesses themselves are asking the Government to address those issues urgently.

[Mr Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

I thank the shadow Minister for her perfectly timed speech.

16:09

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Brandon Lewis)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker.

I congratulate the Members who secured this debate, which has been very interesting, not least because, in the main, it has been positive about the great things that are happening across our high streets and town centres. There has been positive consideration of what more can be done to ensure that, in the 21st century, we have town centres not only that we can be proud of but that serve and reflect what the community needs and wants. From that point of view, the debate has been extremely good, interesting and positive.

One of the fundamental differences between the hon. Member for City of Durham (Roberta Blackman-Woods) and me—my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) outlined this fairly well—is that I think the high street is what we make it. We have to understand that the high street is changing. In some ways, the high street will get smaller and town centres will shrink as retail demand changes. I will address that in a moment.

It is very much not for the Government to manage the high street from the top down. The Grimsey report outlines, and I have discussed this with Bill Grimsey, that the Government should dictate exactly how a high street plan should be done and who should do it. The report contains an idea for taxing successful retailers to help less successful or smaller retailers. We certainly will not be considering the introduction of more taxes that hit retailers in the way that the previous Government perhaps would have done.

We clearly want businesses to have flexibility. When I talk to businesses, they say that they want flexibility to evolve and reflect. To be entirely honest, I am slightly confused by the shadow Minister’s comment that we should have flexibility for diversification without allowing flexibility for planning changes in the high street. I am not sure how we can have it both ways. The reality is that councils have the ability through planning permission, not least through article 4 and through the regulation of gaming, to ensure that the high street balance is correct.

On fast food, I have never said anything of the sort suggested by the shadow Minister. The point I have made previously is that it is not for the Government to dictate whether there are too many or too few fast food restaurants. High streets and town centres will reflect what we, as customers and consumers, demand through how we shop and what we use, whatever the company—whether it is a small local business or a big brand name.

Big brand names are often run by local business people, either directly or as a franchise, and they certainly employ local people and spend good money on their shops. They can be an important part of the high street. As my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) said, we tend to miss those companies when they start talking about moving, but, equally, they are an important part of the high street. We should not knock that. The big brand names are there because we use them, which is the reality of life.

The hon. Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey) made a thoughtful and powerful speech on the digital world in which we now live. I think that we are now the country with the highest online shopping usage as a percentage of shopping population. We must be aware that things are changing. Google glasses are potentially part of what we could be seeing in future.

The hon. Lady is right that we need to spread best practice. A debate such as this—we have heard some examples this afternoon—is a good way to do that. We have put £1 million into the Association of Town Centre Management, and the future high streets forum is considering how we share best practice, whether it is through the 333 town teams, through volunteers working in their local area or through the Portas pilots. More generally, we are all working across the media to promote good examples of best practice.

In my constituency of Great Yarmouth, we have a town centre partnership and a business improvement district, or BID. I am a huge fan of BIDs. One of the things that the Great Yarmouth BID has done is to introduce wi-fi across the town, which has been massively welcomed by the local community. The hon. Lady is absolutely right that we must ensure that our towns embrace such digital technology, not least as retail and our high streets change. I appreciate the title of the debate, but our high streets are growing towards being not only somewhere that we go to shop and do other things, but a destination for leisure and hospitality where we may do some shopping. We must recognise that fact.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) touched on his experience and declared himself another unabashed Mary Portas fan. He can join my club. Mary Portas has done a fantastic job, not least in raising the issue’s profile and setting out a journey and ideology, to which the key is recognising the unique selling point of every individual town centre.

From the success of the Portas pilots and town teams around the country, we can see that there is no homogeneous tick list; different things work differently in different places. Good things can work brilliantly in one place, but they will not necessarily work somewhere else, so we must examine how different areas evolve. I congratulate The Daily Telegraph on its current high streets campaign, a part of which is a competition to find, through its readers, the best high street, and I am delighted to be chairing the panel. An interesting thing that has come from that is how every area is different and how areas are embracing their differences to make them stand out as unique selling points.

My hon. Friend also mentioned parking charges. Braintree, for example, saw a 40,000 increase in footfall as soon as parking charges were reduced. Parking charges are an important part of the mix, and areas should be acutely aware of that. He was also right to highlight young retailers and young people being part of the high street. The high street should absolutely be a leisure and hospitality area, which is a point that links perfectly to the contribution of the hon. Member for Tynemouth (Mr Campbell). He spoke about the importance of safety on our high streets, particularly given the growing night-time economy. That economy is to be embraced as an important part of the high street, but the staff who work there need to be safe. People have the right to be treated with respect and will provide good customer service as a result. Equally, when our children and friends go out, we want to know that they are safe. They have the right to feel safe.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes described the changing shape of the high street. He mentioned the small business rate relief, and I am proud that the Government have trebled that to over £900 million to help businesses right across the country. He makes a fair point about how retail is changing and how retail spaces in many areas need to shrink. I am pleased that we are consulting on the flexibility to change retail spaces back to residential use, which would increase footfall in our town centres and allow them to reflect the change towards leisure and hospitality.

Hair and beauty, and the service industry in general, is one of the fastest-growing parts of the high street. Businesses such as Fusion in Gorleston in my constituency have spent a fortune improving their shop fronts. My hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) mentioned the future high streets forum. I am looking at its membership and want to change it slightly to reflect the hospitality and leisure aspect of high streets, including the service industries. Hairdressers, for example, have not been a part of it before. The high street economy is no longer just about retail. It is widening and small businesses represent a part of that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Mary Macleod) mentioned parking and pop-up shops. We practise what we preach in the Department for Communities and Local Government—not only did we proudly cut our costs by 60%, but we also have a pop-up shop, which I recommend for hon. Members’ Christmas shopping. She is right that areas should be considering such things. In Great Yarmouth, our town centre partnership and the council are looking at exactly that sort of thing, almost as an alchemy centre to give new independent retailers the opportunity to develop, to test the market and to grow.

My hon. Friend, along with other hon. Members, also referred to business rates, about which I do get comments from time to time. We must appreciate that not only do we have the autumn statement next week—I would not want to prejudge what the Chancellor will say—but that retail is only one part of business rates. When we looked at the revaluation, we found that there would have been 800,000 losers and just 300,000 winners, of which retail would have been one, as would much of the hospitality and leisure industries. We must be cautious when making presumptions about business rates, but we can discuss that another time. I outlined the matter during Communities and Local Government questions on Monday.

My hon. Friend the Member for Congleton mentioned local enterprise partnerships, which should, where relevant, consider town centres as important. In some areas, if employees will have somewhere good to go, the town centre can actually be part of what will attract a company to invest in an area. A good, vibrant town centre can be the heartbeat of a community. My hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole touched on that when he mentioned the town centre being at the centre of a community.

Charity shops do have an important part to play. My hon. Friend the Member for Congleton mentioned research, and Demos is currently carrying out some on this very issue. Good charity shops can play an important role in the community. They receive both good and bad press, but any kind of retail outlet on the high street can be good or bad depending on how it is presented and looked after. Charity shops sometimes offer coffee facilities and can also get involved running community events from their stores. They can also be a huge draw for footfall.

My hon. Friend also touched on planning, and councils now have the ability to have a play in that system through their local plan. We have discussed this before. I hope that her council will hurry up and get its local plan in place. I am quite happy to chastise them a little as it has been somewhat slower in getting its plan together than residents would appreciate.

My hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole made important points about how the town centre should be the heartbeat of its community. I am pleased that he has such a positive view of the future and he is quite right to do so. The town centre is an important source of employment in the community and can provide a fantastic career path. Despite the numbers of people employed in hospitality and retail in this country, we often undervalue the sector and do not promote enough just what a fantastic career it can be. Someone starting out in retail could end up in the House of Commons, which could happen to anyone, or they could have a fantastic career in retail, which goes across many different organisations, or they could be an entrepreneur running their own independent business—hopefully benefiting from the Government’s small business rate relief.

In conclusion, our town centres have a really good opportunity as we move forward. Change is happening on the high street and the high street must change. High streets should grasp the opportunity to become what the consumer wants them to be in the 21st century. The Government must tread a careful line. We want not to interfere and create false economies, but to create a facility where local people, local businesses and local authorities can work together to provide what we all want—vibrant, successful high streets and town centres that are the heartbeat of their communities and successful not just now, but for years to come.

16:27

[Ann Coffey]

With the leave of the House, I will briefly respond. Thank you, Mr Walker, for chairing this debate. I thank my co-sponsor and co-chair of the all-party group, the hon. Member for North Swindon, whom I look forward to working with on retail issues. He clearly has huge knowledge and real experience in the sector. I also thank the shadow Minister and the Minister for their thoughtful replies.

I thank all hon. Members for their contributions, which were based on their different experiences and different constituencies. It is a strength of the constituency system that it enables Members who represent big cities, rural communities or coastal towns, where many different things happen, to contribute to such a debate. The range of topics has been huge—jobs, crime, planning, parking, partnerships, empty shops, local initiatives, business improvement districts and everything else.

It has been a fantastic debate that has shown the complex interaction of factors, and that the problems are not easily solvable by one simple public policy or private initiative. I stress again that we need public-private partnerships to provide innovation and to transform the high street, but they must be the right kind of partnerships, namely those based on evidence of the right kind of interventions.

Question put and agreed to.

16:28

Sitting adjourned.