Arcadia and Debenhams: Business Support and Job Retention

Lord Empey Excerpts

Thursday 3rd December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

The noble Baroness is quite right to focus on the proportion of women who are employed in retail specifically. We are doing all we can for all affected employees and have doubled the number of front-line work coaches across the network of jobcentres, who will help with preparation of CVs and interview practice. Our plan for jobs also includes a series of measures to protect, support and create jobs. We are also helping those who have lost jobs in the pandemic back into employment through our £238 million JETS programme. I will write to the noble Baroness on the specifics of women employees and the projects we have to support them, having done some research.

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

My noble friend will be aware of the large rates bills faced by high-street and town-centre retailers. She will also aware that out-of-town shopping centres are not subject to the same amount of rates. Secondly, parking in town centres is discouraged or extremely expensive, whereas in out-of-town centres it is free and encouraged. Under these circumstances, how can our high streets possibly hope to compete against larger organisations, particularly online, which are operating at warehouse-level rates against town-centre rates? Surely this policy needs to be completely scrapped and to start over.

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

My Lords, it is right that all businesses make a contribution to maintaining the roads, buses and emptying bins—all things on which their customers rely—but the noble Lord asks a good question about the difficulties of following a green agenda and discouraging car use for out-of-town shopping centres. We need the whole system to be fair, which is why we will deliver a fundamental review of the whole business rates system. This will build on the changes we are making, which are worth over £23 billion to businesses over the next five years, and will take nearly half of all businesses in England out of paying any business rates at all. We have committed to small businesses by increasing the retail discount to 50% and, due to Covid-19, we have gone further and increased it to 100%.