Employment and the High Street

Debate between Dan Poulter and Kevin Hollinrake

Wednesday 7th December 2022 Westminster Hall

[Kevin Hollinrake]

The hon. Member makes a good point. I was just going to come to his experiences shopping with his family in the physical high street. My family does that too. On Saturday, I was in Malton—one of the towns in my constituency—for Small Business Saturday. I too enjoy the experience of physically going shopping, and Malton is a wonderful example, as it created a new identity for itself as Yorkshire’s food capital. This is the future of high streets: a mixture of hospitality, leisure and retail. Malton has successfully done that, and there are lots of lessons to be learned from it.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) rightly pointed out that there is an opportunity for businesses to be not just a physical or an online retainer, but both or either. It is about the creativity of businesses in meeting their customers’ needs, and that is what we have to facilitate. Of course, there is a multitude of opportunities for employment, from flexibility to the development of new and portable skills. We also need to recognise retail as a rewarding career—something that the Retail Sector Council, which I co-chair, is keen to do.

The high street has struggled with the pandemic, which has caused difficulties. We should pay tribute to the creativity and resilience of businesses and their ability to respond to those challenges; we have all seen examples on our high streets. It is right that part of our mission is to ensure that our high streets and the communities that depend on them receive the investment they need to properly plan and grow for the long term.

The hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green talked about the lack of meaningful action from the Government, which is one thing I do not accept. At a local level, we have to ensure that our local authorities have the right plans for infrastructure to drive footfall, and ensure that goods and services flow easily, and businesses and consumers benefit from decent roads, affordable parking and a clean and well-cared for mixed environment. At a national level, the Government are doing much, including through initiatives such as our £4.8 billion levelling-up fund and the future high streets fund. Last year, we published our build back better high streets strategy, which identified many changes we need, and we have already gone a long way towards delivering on that.

[Dr Dan Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is right to highlight the potential benefits of wisely spending the levelling-up fund or the towns fund money that is available to local authorities. He may want to note that this has been done very successfully in Ipswich, where I helped to devise a scheme to support local shopping parades, which will see improved parking and many other enhancements. Might we be able to use that as an exemplar of what can be done to support the local high street and improve footfall?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

That is a great example. Through the different councils, we are determined to develop different best practice examples. My hon. Friend points to the leadership in his context, and I urge all colleagues to do the same and be leaders in their communities.

The Government have created a new commercial business and service use class, giving businesses the freedom and flexibility, through class E, to change use without needing planning permission. We are working to make permanent many of the regulatory easements we introduced during the pandemic that not only allowed cafes and restaurants to move the indoors to the outdoors but helped to create vibrant, bustling outdoor spaces. In the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, we are committed to going further to support places to tackle blight and revive our high streets, by giving new powers to local authorities to require landlords to rent out long-term vacant commercial premises to prospective tenants.

The hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) raised the important redevelopment of the Guildhall, which is a fantastic facility. I am sure she knows that the £22 million for that came from His Majesty’s Government’s growth deal and the getting building fund. The Government are doing much in these areas, including in the hospitality strategy and much more.

I will touch on one or two of the points made. The hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) was understandably concerned about the closure of bank branches, which we have all experienced in our areas. Banking hubs are part of the solution, which we are supporting, as are post offices. There is a banking agreement that helps our post offices to maintain their profitability.

The hon. Member for Stockport talked about his local post office. Post offices are vital to local communities. The Government provide around £50 million a year in subsidies to ensure post offices are still with us. He also raised the matter of access to cash. Clause 47 of the Financial Services and Markets Bill deals with that, and gives the Financial Conduct Authority new powers to require provision of access to cash where it is disappearing from our high streets.

I will touch on business support thus far. The autumn statement’s £13.6 billion of business rates support has been welcomed right across the sector. It would be irresponsible and undeliverable to commit to simply scrap a tax completely, when it raises £22 billion in England alone, and not to say what it will be replaced with. That tax money has to be replaced by something, and we need to understand exactly what the replacement will be. Our approach is more realistic, reasonable and deliverable, as is the energy bill relief scheme, which is hugely important, as it provides vital support for businesses through to the end of March. We have been clear that there will be further support for some vulnerable sectors. The details of that support will be announced by the end of the year. For retail, I am sure there is a very good case for many of our smaller businesses on our high streets to get extended support.

I want to give the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green time to respond. I thank all Members for their contributions. It is encouraging to see that all sides of the House share a common cause to look after our high streets, and make sure they are still focal points for our local communities.

O’Neill Review

Debate between Dan Poulter and Kevin Hollinrake

Tuesday 7th March 2017 Westminster Hall

[Kevin Hollinrake]

My hon. Friend is a fantastic champion of the natural environment, and she makes a very good point.

The World Health Organisation has stated that antimicrobial resistance is

“one of the greatest challenges for public health”

and that the problem is increasing and we are

“fast running out of…options.”

Antibiotic resistance is just one form of antimicrobial resistance—others concern viral and fungal infections—but my focus is antibiotics, which the public more readily understand and should have real concerns about. Bacteria undergo an eternal battle for survival, and natural resistance occurs as a result of bacteria fighting that battle, but when we use antibiotics—particularly when we overuse them—that natural resistance accelerates significantly and becomes super-charged, and we end up with many more antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

[Dr Daniel Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on bringing the debate. He is right to highlight the scale of the challenge not just here but globally: it is difficult for countries to bring forward large-scale programmes to deal with the problem of antimicrobial resistance. Does he agree that, apart from inappropriate prescribing, one of the key issues in this country is people not always completing courses of antibiotics, which increases the challenges and problems of bacteria developing resistance?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I defer to my hon. Friend’s in-depth knowledge in this area. I recognise my father’s habits in taking antibiotics when he felt a bit unwell—he had a little cupboard in the corner of his lounge. That is a problem, and that is why we need to improve the education on treatment of illnesses for which people are prescribed antibiotics.

The point about antibiotic resistance spreading is that it can be spread in so many ways: on aeroplanes; in our water; from contact with unwashed hands of people who carry bacteria resistance; coughing and sneezing; and from animals to humans. Some Members may have come across the excellent BBC Radio 4 drama “Resistance” —the first episode was aired on Friday and the second episode is this Friday—which talks about the transference from animals to humans. That means we must tackle this problem both in agriculture and in our health services.

Bacteria do not recognise national borders, so, as many hon. Members have already pointed out, this is a global problem. We would think that with those apocalyptic visions of the future we would be spending an awful lot of money on tackling this issue, but that is not the case. About $100 billion is spent every year on cancer research, but only about $5 billion is spent every year on tackling antimicrobial resistance. The reason for that is the commercial return that large pharmaceutical companies will get from bringing forward a new antibiotic to tackle this issue. Almost by definition, any new drug is held as a last line of defence, so there is not a significant commercial return for the pharmaceutical companies who we rely on for such new drugs. About $50 billion a year is spent on antibiotics but only about $5 billion a year is spent on patented antibiotics, which is equivalent to one cancer drug. It is a better commercial activity to be involved in cancer research and cancer drug development than in antimicrobial resistance. There has been a huge reduction in the number of pharmaceutical companies involved in research and development—in 1990 there were 18 and in 2010 there were only four—and no new classes of antibiotic drugs have been developed in the past 25 years.

Of course, the O’Neill review has studied that and come up with clear and compelling recommendations such as rapid diagnostic testing, which the right hon. Member for Oxford East (Mr Smith) referred to. Yesterday we had a Twitter debate, which was interesting, listening for an hour to people’s experiences. Many clinicians got involved in that particular Twittersphere, and we trended nationally at one point, which was certainly a new experience for me. One thing that came across was the pressure that clinicians were under to prescribe antibiotics to people who felt ill. Obviously, if we had diagnostics that could show people that they did not carry something that could be treated by an antibiotic, they would be much less likely to put that pressure on doctors.