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Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Bromborough) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Dowd. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen (Alex Ballinger) on introducing the debate. There are a lot of ideas and much intent to tackle this problem, because high streets are so evocative. They are a visual symbol of economic challenges and act as an ever-present reminder of what has been lost. That is one reason why people feel so strongly about the brazen illegality we see on high streets the length and breadth of the country. It is no longer a question of isolated bad actors but of a regulatory system that has been repeatedly outpaced by evolving criminal business models.
My constituents are angry that where once there was an active high street with household names, there now stand illegal vape shops, mini-marts and a suspicious number of barbers. They know that something is not right, particularly when legitimate businesses have already vacated the area due to reduced footfall. But the law is fighting back. I have joined local enforcement activity in Ellesmere Port, where all the agencies came together and carried out co-ordinated raids, resulting in the seizure of illicit tobacco and vape products, with shops shut down under court orders. That was most welcome, but what was seized was sadly just the tip of the iceberg, and we see a repeated cycle of enforcement and re-emergence with connected parties.
It is the recurring nature of these rackets that shakes people’s confidence in the system, especially when they are so brazen, so I absolutely welcome the Government’s intent to tackle the problem. There is much to commend in the blitz on dodgy shops programme, which contains measures that finally go beyond rhetoric. The creation of the high street organised crime unit has long been called for, and the commitment to double the time for which a shop can be closed after breaching the law will also help, but as a number of people have said, we can go further.
A Business and Trade Committee inquiry found that
“enforcement agencies do not have the necessary powers to permanently close”
rogue businesses. The director of National Trading Standards said,
“you seize, go back, seize and go back”.
It is clear that the tools we have are not fit for purpose. Councils should have the power to close premises permanently without having to go to court, and landlords should not get off the hook if their property is used for illegal purposes. Landlords need help to make wise choices, and they could be encouraged to flag any suspicious or illegal behaviour. Those landlords who are indifferent about who is renting their property should have nowhere to hide if illegal activity is happening on their premises. If landlords are indifferent, they should face criminal sanctions, too.
We also need a tougher approach on the collection of fines. Too often, they go uncollected. According to the Home Office, £18 million of fines were issued against illegal car washes in 2025, but the Department could not say how many had actually been paid. After a freedom of information request, we know that the figure is around 5%. We need a proper deterrent; these fines must mean something, and there should be tough enforcement action against individuals.
I know that a number of Members wish to speak, so I will end my remarks, but I want finally to say that I welcome the action taken so far. There is no shortage of ideas about how we can go further. It is good to see that the problem is finally receiving the attention it deserves. Regenerating our high streets is critical to national renewal, but to regenerate them, we first of all have to reclaim them. Illicit activity on our high streets is an evocative issue that frustrates law-abiding people and erodes confidence in the state’s ability to tackle crime, so I absolutely welcome the blitz on dodgy shops and the action to back up the rhetoric, but we need to go further by addressing the problems at source, to prevent illegal shops from opening in the first place and then leaving no hiding place for those who are found to have broken the law.
The Minister for Policing and Crime (Sarah Jones)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Mr Dowd.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen (Alex Ballinger) for securing this excellent debate. The message I take away from it is, “You’ve done some stuff that we think is good, but we need to do a lot more.” This issue is undoubtedly one that we will all be judged on when we next stand before the electorate.
As I have in Croydon, every Member in this place will have experience of a high street that they grew up going to that they know will never again be as they remember it. We also know that we need to tell a new story for our high streets. As shops have closed for all the reasons that Members have outlined, illicit activity has stepped in. It is important to start with the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft): we have not only to tackle the criminality, but to establish what we want to do with our town centres. As has been mentioned, there is some innovation across the country where town centres are growing, which is great.
The Government are very aware that we have to understand and appreciate the fact that the town centre of the future will be different, and we need to change laws and do what we can to encourage a new high street. A wider high street strategy is being pulled together at the moment; every Government Department that could possibly be relevant is coming together and asking, “What more can we do to ensure that our high streets can thrive for the businesses we want to see on them, rather than this illicit activity?”
The activity itself has been very well described, and my hon. Friends the Members for Leigh and Atherton (Jo Platt) and for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn) showed leadership in painting us a very good picture of the problems we see nationally. We know there is this increase in shops—I see it on my high street, as everybody does—but people are not in them, so how are they making money? What is going on in that space?
As other Members will have done, I recently joined the raid of a shop in London, which was a big joint operation between trading standards, local authorities and the police, and some of the things I learned were very uncomfortable to hear. For example, an increasing number of builders are being employed by these shop owners to build hidden cupboards so that people can hide their illegal activities. Also, there were lots of cameras in the back of the shop, but they were not there to protect the shop itself; they were to keep an eye on the people working there—these are nasty criminal gangs that want to ensure that the people they employ are not stealing from them. The young lad who was in the shop when we did the raid had nothing to do with the ownership; apparently, the owner was away. As has been mentioned, understanding who owns some of these properties is a complicated and difficult challenge. I am very well aware of the problem that we are trying to fix.
I am very grateful to the many Members who pointed to the important work that the Government have introduced—I do not want to diminish it by saying that we of course need to go further. We have the new high street organised crime unit in the Home Office, as well as the £30 million that has been allocated, in part, to fund the National Crime Agency, and £6 million of which is going to trading standards. Many Members have talked about how the ability of trading standards to respond to today’s challenges has been completely wiped out, so that money will help them. Some £1.5 million has been allocated to immigration enforcement, just to add to all the other work that is happening in immigration—my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen asked about the connections, which of course exist; just today, there was an immigration raid in my constituency—and £1.5 million is going from that pot to HMRC so that it can do some work on this issue. Members talked about Companies House; there is more work to be done there, for sure.
The closure powers—the closure notice extension to 72 hours and, looking ahead, the longer, 12-month closure—are important, and I am glad that Members have welcomed them. I was very interested in what Members had to say about the Netherlands. As Policing Minister, I do not really get to go on trips, but maybe there should be a Netherlands trip with the campaign group to see what is being done there. In the absence of such a trip, I will certainly read more about how that regime is working. That is a really important point: we should look to other countries and understand what they are doing.
We are open to all of the many good suggestions that Members have made. There is a ministerial group chaired by the new Security Minister; she would have been here, but she could not be, as she is introducing legislation today. I am also on the committee, along with all the Departments that Members would expect to be there. There was a push for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to do work in this space; I know that it is looking at that, and I will certainly talk to it more about that. I will say that all the suggestions that have been made today were mentioned in that first ministerial meeting; we talked about all the same issues. I know we need to go further and faster and we need to push forward, but there was nothing surprising in the suggestions that hon. Members made; these are very sensible things that we are looking at and want to take forward.
There will be big national pushes under Operation Machinize. For obvious reasons, I cannot say when they will be, but Operation Machinize has worked effectively; when all the agencies work together, there is a much more effective outcome. All Members made useful suggestions: more support for trading standards; looking at licensing and more powers for local authorities; data sharing—that is an important suggestion, which I certainly agree with—a place for direct reporting into trading standards, which is an interesting one; and more powers to tackle landlords as well as the organised crime.
The Home Office’s policing reform programme will, I hope, help us tackle these kinds of issues much more effectively. Setting up a national police service could tackle this co-ordinated, serious organised crime in a much better way. At the moment, every time there is a new issue, we have to set up a structure to tackle it at national level. The national police service will be there to do that. It will bring together the National Crime Agency, counter-terrorism and all the other national organisations. We know that some of this money laundering is driving terrorism, for example, and at the moment two different bodies are tackling that. Bringing it all together and having co-ordination at the centre will help.
At the bedrock of our policing policy, we have the commitment to 13,000 more neighbourhood officers on our streets. That will make a significant difference in how people feel about their high streets and in the criminal activity that we are able to tackle. When people mention, for example, kids hanging about outside the illegal shops and doing things that we think they should not be doing, the police will be there to tackle those problems.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen again for securing this debate, and I thank all Members—
Jim Shannon
I hope the Minister does not mind my asking, but would she take the time, as she often does on her visits to Northern Ireland, to engage with the Northern Ireland Justice Minister, Naomi Long? There are lots of things we can do better together, and we can share ideas, so will the Minister take that opportunity on one of her many visits to Northern Ireland?
Sarah Jones
Yes, of course. Forgive me; I should have responded to that earlier. The hon. Member also made the point about illicit trade across all our nations, and we need to work together to tackle that as well.
I will end just as I began, by saying that we will be judged on this when we next stand before—
Gideon Amos
I am very grateful. I just want to clarify one point about planning controls. Key points were made about whether shops are actually shops if their windows are completely covered. If planning guidance was changed, that might open the way for enforcement under the existing system. Will the Minister get that message through to MHCLG?
Sarah Jones
Yes, of course. There are several areas for MHCLG to look at, and I know that it is already looking at what more powers we can have to close down the shops and stop them opening in the first place, as well as over the clustering of shops. We need to look at all those issues.
I thank everybody again. I very much get the message that we have started a good piece of work, but there is a lot more to do.