High Street Businesses: Government Support

Daniel Francis Excerpts

Thursday 4th June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Daniel Francis (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. I thank the hon. Member for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover) for securing this debate. Many in my constituency will welcome the comments by my hon. Friends the Members for Bolton West (Phil Brickell) and for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn), given the kind of shops that we have in Bexleyheath and Crayford and the changes we have seen in recent years.

I declare an interest: I am a member of the USDAW parliamentary group. I spent 11 years working in retail. I started as a Saturday boy—an old-fashioned term, I know—in my Marks & Spencer in Bexleyheath, and I worked my way up to a management role, so I understand the importance of high street businesses to our communities.

In my constituency, we have two town centres in the two towns, with a mix of large retailers and independent stores, a smaller high street in Northumberland Heath and a number of smaller shopping parades. I appreciate that, in the 32 years since I first worked in retail, our town centres have changed, and that has been heavily driven by changes in our shopping habits.

In my constituency, with a retail park in Crayford and a 1980s shopping centre in Bexleyheath, we have lost some of our high street shops from the shopping centre, which has a higher footfall, because of the pattern of businesses, particularly my former employer, that want to be in those retail parks. I know from the hon. Member for Wimbledon (Mr Kohler) that my former employer has recently invested in its store in his constituency—in fact, in a number of stores in London—but with a very defined model, which is very different from when I first worked for it 32 years ago. It is about food retail rather than clothing, and it is about retail parks. That is the reality of where some of our high street businesses have gone; we cannot replicate the high street of the 20th century.

There are some issues unique to my constituency. I thank my local business improvement district and Broadway shopping centre in Bexleyheath for the work they do to diversify opportunity and to try to bring leisure opportunities into the town centre. I hope there is some good news coming, with a new retailer in the near future. I receive requests, notably from the Kings Arms, Globetrotters soft play, Masala Inn, Zingara, Stuzzichini and Buddha restaurant in Bexleyheath, and the Duke’s Head, and the Duchess of Kent in Northumberland Heath, about the pressures on the hospitality industry. I thank you, Ms Lewell, for the work you do leading on those issues.

I support the Government’s Great British summer savings, which I hope will increase footfall for a number of those businesses. I note that Government changes have meant that two thirds of the pubs in my constituency have seen their business rates go down this year, but there is more we need to do and, while any measure would need to be costed, I am receptive to looking at the rate of VAT in the hospitality industry.

On cash, there are no longer any banks in Crayford and Northumberland Heath. We rely on post offices in those two places for cash services. We need to look further at the criteria for banking hubs and make sure there are more of them.

I welcome the Government’s announcements on the high streets strategy. I engaged with the previous Minister and I look forward to engaging with the new Minister to look at more investment in my patch. On Pride in Place, we are seeing £20 million coming into Slade Green; the retailers in Forest Road and Slade Green will look forward to that investment.

On transport, I continue to press Transport for London for a direct bus route between Crayford and Northumberland Heath to support the shopping parades, and to press my Conservative council to introduce a fairer short-stay parking arrangement for traders in Northumberland Heath.

I welcome measures in the Crime and Policing Act 2026. I have been at the forefront—I have wrestled shoplifters to the floor, many times—and I welcome the measures that the Government have brought forward, but there is still much more that we need to do to support people, and I will continue to press for that.

My policing teams have done some great work in Crayford around illegal working, particularly with delivery drivers in my retail park, with arrests and deportations as a result. I thank my policing team in Crayford for that. They have also worked on shoplifting there. In Bexleyheath, they have done similar work; I went out on a raid with them last summer and looked at the work they do. They have also done some great work on illegal shops, which hon. Members have commented on, but they still need an increase in police numbers.

I have welcomed the changes that have been brought forward. Police in Bexleyheath now have higher police numbers at the end of the day and at school kicking-out time, and on a Friday and Saturday night. That is as a result of changes that were controversial, but which I have supported.

There is more that the Government could do to support our high streets and businesses. I will continue to press them on that, but, as I have said, I support them on a number of the things that have already been done.

--- Later in debate ---

[Blair McDougall]

One of the hallmarks of our efforts through Pride in Place and other measures is recognition that there is not really a one-size-fits-all solution. In my constituency, we do not have one central high street; we probably have about a dozen separate ones, which sounds similar to the hon. Gentleman’s constituency.

It is clear from what everyone has said during the debate that high streets are facing real pressures, from changing consumer habits to crime and increasing costs. There is not a single quick fix—there is no one-size-fits-all solution. It will take determined effort and real strategy from the Government. A key part of that is our small business strategy, which was launched just short of a year ago and aims to cut red tape, cut costs and make things just a little easier in challenging times. We will build on the strategy later this year as we bring forward a cross-Government high streets strategy that aims to support the businesses that we have been talking about today and equip local authorities with the tools that they need to drive long-term regeneration. We are working really closely on that with businesses, representative organisations and, indeed, Members from across the House.

We have already started taking significant action through, for example, our high streets innovation partnerships—a £301 million package that aims to help local areas to reinvent and reimagine high streets, to make them more attractive places to live and put more services into them. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Phil Brickell) mentioned a Woolworths that had been replaced by businesses of lower value over the years. There is a challenge for all of us within our areas, working with local authorities and health authorities, to make sure that we locate more services in our areas and drive more footfall to them.

I will give an example of that type of action. I also oversee the Post Office, and as well as the Government making the decision to keep the Post Office network open at its current level, there are really exciting plans under way from the Post Office to create a new community hub model for post offices in towns across the UK. That will offer a place for commercial services and public services to be delivered, and enhance the role that post offices have as an anchor in the high streets.

I will turn quickly to some of the issues raised by hon. Members and outline the areas that the Government are focusing on within each of them. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) raised the issue of payment providers. That issue was raised with me by Kadir’s, a chip shop in Barrhead in my constituency. The payment services regulator recently carried out two market reviews in this area to look at those cost increases and is currently looking at what action to take as a result.

Many hon. Members rightly raised the impact of business rates on high street businesses. They say that all of heaven rejoices more over one sinner who repents, so I welcome the acknowledgment by the shadow Minister that we inherited a system that was, frankly, a mess. It was chaotic; it kept changing. It did not give people any sense of stability. For high streets, we have to ensure that our business rates system is fair, stable and responsive to the changing economic situation that hon. Members have described. That is why, in the face of the cost of the first revaluation since the pandemic, we have put in the £4.3 billion support package.

The hon. Member for Wimbledon (Mr Kohler) asked when we will take on the big online giants—the warehouses—and start to shift some of the burden on to them and away from high street businesses. That is exactly what we did with those lower multipliers. That was paid for by putting the burden on to the big warehouses. We are working in that area. Rather than tinkering, we are doing that big structural change.

Let me turn to jobs, and particularly youth unemployment and the link to high streets. My hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Daniel Francis) said that he was a Saturday boy. I was a Saturday boy as well in Beveridge’s fishmongers in Giffnock. It taught me everything about how to talk to people. It gave me confidence. Every time someone came into the shop, I had to re-find my confidence—remake myself. I do not think that I would be where I am now had I not had that experience.

Some Members raised national insurance contributions in that context. Businesses still have those reliefs for under-21s and for apprentices under 25. It is worth about £2.5 billion. In terms of national insurance, there is relief there for employing young people, but I absolutely take the point. Obviously, the Milburn review is working on the much bigger issue of the number of young people not getting that opportunity.

[Daniel Francis]

I spoke to Alan Milburn about this yesterday. Does the Minister accept that, although there is a clear job for Government in this matter, there is also a clear job for retailers? The kind of schemes the retailer I worked for had in the ’90s for young and disabled people have gone by the wayside for many large retailers. We need to bring them round the table and get them to bring back some of those schemes.

[Blair McDougall]

My hon. Friend will know from talking to Alan Milburn that he is very much of the view that this is not something the Government can do alone; it will need to be done in partnership with industry and, as my hon. Friend says, with retailers in particular.

Nothing in recent years has made people angrier than either experiencing retail crime or seeing videos and images of it on social media, in which shop workers are treated appallingly. Despite that, there are encouraging signs that our efforts to tackle retail crime are beginning to bite. Shop theft has started to fall, following really sharp increases under the previous Government. At the heart of that effort was the revitalisation of neighbourhood policing with 13,000 additional personnel being delivered, 3,100 of whom are already in place.

My hon. Friends the Members for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn) and for Bolton West spoke, rightly, with some anger at how organised crime—as they correctly named it—has impacted the way that our high streets feel. We are seeing legitimate, independent and valued businesses having to compete with businesses that are not real, and that is simply unfair.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West was right to talk about his campaign and efforts, along with other Members, to deliver the high streets organised crime unit to bring about the system-wide response that he described—bringing together HMRC and local authorities, and working with Companies House, the Insolvency Service and the organisations that I oversee. As part of that, my officials have joined the Home Office in engaging with the Dutch Government to learn the lessons from their approach with the Bibob Act, highlighted by my hon. Friend, with a view to exploring whether a similar approach could be taken here.

The Home Office will shortly launch a consultation on strengthening closure orders, with stronger powers for local authorities being considered as part of our work on the high street strategy. Importantly, this is all backed by funding for the organisations that we rely on to do this. This is about fairness, but it is also about the way people feel about where they live. It is one of those issues on which our constituents have been ahead of us; they have noticed that there is something wrong on the high street, and we need to deal with it.

Finally on the point about that sense of where we live, many hon. Members referred to Pride in Place, and the nearly £6 billion invested to support hundreds of places around the country. This is not a one-size-fits-all approach and it is not directed from Whitehall; it is communities shaping for themselves how they want their high streets and local areas to be reimagined.

Alongside that, hon. Members mentioned the perennial problem of empty properties. They are one of the most visible challenges facing our high streets. High street rental auctions are now beginning to bite, not just in terms of the number that have gone through the whole process; the very ability of local authorities to have that conversation is letting them engage with landlords, changing the nature of that relationship and changing things on the high streets. This week, we announced £10 million of funding to support the expansion of high street rental auctions to help councils to identify opportunities, deepen engagement with landlords and get properties ready for use. That is a practical and important step forward.

Finally, hon. Members raised the issue of banking hubs and the loss of banking facilities in local areas. In Barrhead, a large industrial town in my constituency, we recently lost our last bank, so I get the frustration, particularly with the process of deciding whether an area gets a banking hub or not. As hon. Members will know, the Government commissioned an independent review into access to banking services. Alongside that, we are supporting the roll-out of 350 banking hubs, 235 of which are already open. That is alongside the work that we are doing to make sure that the Post Office network is sustained, invested in and able to provide the banking services that people rely on.

I thank again the hon. Member for Didcot and Wantage for securing the debate. As I have said in this room before, we sometimes talk about high streets as being an important part of the community, but for me, as many hon. Members from all parties have made clear today, they are not just a part of the community but where community happens. They are where people get services, meet their friends and have fun, and where those who are otherwise socially isolated find companionship and community. That is why we have to do far more to support them, to ensure that all the places that we represent thrive and have a sense of pride.