High Street Retailers Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Business and Trade
Dawn Butler
Main Page: Dawn Butler (Labour - Brent East)Department Debates - View all Dawn Butler's debates with the Department for Business and Trade
(1 day, 15 hours ago)
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Mr Gregory Campbell
I fully agree with my hon. Friend. Innovation will be the key. In many towns—I am sure that this is applicable across the UK—there are enough coffee shops and charity shops, and both of those are admirable additions to our high streets. In fact, when I am on constituency work, I find coffee shops very convenient, especially if I do not have much time to get a bite to eat. They offer a facility, as do charity shops, but the high street has to be much more than that.
This is not about the higher-end retailing that exists in, for example, Regent Street or Oxford Street, and I say that not to minimise the high streets across our country. They may be doing well—by the looks of Christmas just past, they are doing well in central London—and much of that is down to money that comes in from outside the United Kingdom.
Dawn Butler (Brent East) (Lab)
In Brent, we have a lot of independent shops. Does the hon. Member agree that we should be more innovative in giving opportunities for more pop-up shops to start businesses?
Mr Campbell
I thank the hon. Member for raising that; I was just coming on to the business of independent shops.
In Northern Ireland, independent retailers have an effective representational body. They are manfully and womanfully struggling to present their case in the face of huge multinationals that exist, particularly on the edge of town and out of town, where there have been a number of out-of-town developments, which tend to swamp town centres. They take advantage of what is, by and large, free car parking, and town centres are choking in some respects because of commuters and people having to pay for charging.
We must be more innovative, particularly in the prime months—in the run-up to Christmas, for example—when we must try to convince various Government Ministers to introduce a charging structure that would benefit local independent retailers on the high street to ensure that some benefit is accrued to local people.