Local Markets

Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd July 2014 Grand Committee

[Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate my noble friend Lord Harrison on securing this debate, and also on the absolutely spot-on tenor with which he used it. There is no doubt that markets are fun. If you want a proof of that, until last year, I was chairman of Covent Garden Market Authority. New Covent Garden Market is the largest wholesale fruit and vegetable and flower market in the country and is down at Nine Elms. During the period when we were getting our redevelopment proposal together, 10% of the Members of the House of Lords joined us at 7.30 am to go on conducted tours around our market. I see one or two noble Lords around the Chamber this evening who are pointing to themselves saying, “I was there”.

Markets are fun, but they are also important. In declaring that interest, I should say that the discussion so far has, rightly, been about street markets. I should like to talk about wholesale markets. New Covent Garden Market is crucial to London’s economy. I am delighted that the Minister who will answer the debate is a Treasury Minister. With all due respect to the Minister in Defra, which is an important part of this whole field, we need Treasury support for the changes we need initiated to help markets.

New Covent Garden Market supplies 40% of all the fresh food in London that is eaten outside the home. It supplies 20 of the top 20 restaurants in London with their fresh food supplies. It gives a quality and choice that is important within London because it is important for our tourism trade. It is part of the attraction. It is part of what makes London a place to come.

I was delighted to learn that the redevelopment in Battersea, on which I worked with a team to get government permission to proceed, will have a completely new market with the same trading space. It will be an icon for markets in this country, particularly for wholesale markets. There are 26 wholesale markets in the UK, employing about 10,000 people. They turn over something like £4 billion a year. If you link that to the retail markets, you are talking about £8 billion of turnover. In some respects it is not huge; in other respects it is without doubt crucial to our economy. About 2,000 jobs depend upon New Covent Garden Market, and about 200 small businesses. Many of those are third and fourth generation family businesses; that is true in street markets as well.

Although the individual areas are small, the totality is not. It is not just that markets bring trade. They bring fresh goods to a community. They also bring some life and an involvement with the community that brick shops do not. People take their time wandering down a street market. In a supermarket they want to be in and out as quickly as they can. Today, you can associate quality with the food that is sold in street markets. Gone are the days when my mother used to send me to Cross Lane Market and say, “Don’t let him give you the apples from the back, Brenda. You point out the ones that you want”.

Thanks to work done by the trade association for markets, NABMA, we know that the food can be as much as 30% less expensive than in the so-called value-for-money supermarkets. In this age of, for a number of reasons, smaller households, markets will supply small portions. If you want only one apple, you can have one apple; you cannot do that in a supermarket.

Markets are also important for breeding entrepreneurs. Where did Marks & Spencer start? Where did Morrisons start? Dare I say it, where did my noble friend Lord Sugar start? They are good for breeding good business.

My noble friend Lord Harrison’s debate asks the Government how they intend to help. I will give the Minister some help by making one or two suggestions. The DCLG picked up the Portas high street review and supported the “Love Your Local Market” scheme, to which my noble friend referred, with some money. In 2012 something like 2,000 new businesses benefited from a free pitch in a market, and the DCLG helped to fund this. As usual, a government department pinched pennies and gave too little. I ask the Minister to give us some help extending that budget, and not because it is a gamble. This year, 4,700 businesses will be start-ups, and 50% of the businesses in this scheme are still in business three months later. That is a pretty high rate of survival. Five European countries are copying it, and it is spreading. Let us support that “Love Your Local Market” scheme with some more money, help and support.

There has been lots of research but whereas the supermarkets can afford to pay for big research, these businesses cannot, and nor can NABMA. We need decent, in-depth economic research which will demonstrate the value of markets to our community and economy. I gather that the Valuation Office Agency has recently started to assess markets for business rates; if you are a street market you do not pay business rates. Many small markets are saying, “Well, I am a business” and are ending up having to pay business rates they cannot afford. Perhaps that could be looked at. I know that discussions are taking place with NABMA, but it would be good if we could make progress on that.

My final request to the Minister is whether the Government could look favourably at a change in the London Local Authorities Act, to enhance the ability of markets in London to operate more flexibly than they can at the moment.