High Streets (Designation, Review and Improvement Plan) Bill

Debate between Jack Brereton and Maria Miller

3rd reading
Friday 26th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

I am delighted to be able to express thanks to colleagues from across the House for their support for this important Bill. I am grateful to the Minister and his officials for their highly constructive engagement at every stage. It has been enormously helpful to draw on the Department’s formidable professionalism and expertise. I thank the Whips Office, and particularly the Comptroller of His Majesty’s Household, my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris), for all her support. I thank the House staff in the Public Bill Office for their support. I also thank the many organisations and individuals who have helped to inform this Bill through conversations I have had with them and reports I have read over many years. I have managed to bring them together thanks to the private Member’s Bill ballot.

I am a passionate believer in local government. My experience at Stoke-on-Trent City Council as a cabinet member for regeneration, transport and heritage informs much of my keen interest in high streets and how to deliver the mechanisms that will co-ordinate preserving and enhancing them. From my most recent engagements, I particularly thank the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, the British Property Federation, Power to Change, the British Retail Consortium and the Local Government Association for adding greatly to my thinking and my determination to secure a Bill with cross-party support. Many conversations with local bodies, individuals and businesses over the years have informed the Bill and I place on record my thanks to them all. Most recently, I met representatives of the Stoke-on-Trent business improvement district, and I am delighted that they support my Bill.

No Bill is without critics, but where I have encountered them, they have been good natured and constructive. For the most part, we have resolved our differences through clarification and amendment in Committee. It is a necessary debate and it has been conducted well. I seem to have struck a chord with Members across the House in arguing that local authorities should be guided towards better co-ordination in ensuring that they understand the dynamics of local high streets in our constituencies, and should work in concert with local communities, property owners and high street businesses to preserve and enhance those treasured places in a way that serves and grows our local economies.

Our high streets are the beating heart of our communities, which was again evident at the vibrant Longton carnival and pig walk parade in my constituency last weekend. It was incredible to see thousands of people flock to the town centre. Huge thanks go to all the volunteers, particularly those in Urban Wilderness and Longton Exchange shopping centre who helped organise the event. It is also fantastic to see the expansion of the number of retailers that are setting up and the businesses that are opening in Longton. We have seen a reduced number of empty spaces, particularly in the Longton Exchange shopping centre, with new independent retailers setting up. They include Keep It Local and So Very Dog and also, across the road from my office, the oatcake shop Linny’s Kitchen, which I occasionally like to pop into for my lunch.

I also detect a strong belief that we as Members should be active participants in agreeing local designations, contributing to reviews, and compiling or commenting on improvement plans for our areas. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Mrs Hamilton) made an excellent and passionate speech in Committee in support of the principles of the Bill and how determined she is to see improvements in Erdington that she has been pushing for as a result of it. I know our high streets are close to her heart and I thank her for that powerful contribution.

Under the Bill, it will be for the Secretary of State to draw up the guidance. As he is an assiduous constituency MP, I am confident that he will have read the mood of the House that Members should be included as consultees. That is important, because it is also implicit in the Bill that local authorities will occasionally designate high streets that include property that belongs to bodies that are formally accountable to this House, rather than to local government. Network Rail is an obvious example. Indeed, in Committee, the Minister revealed that his own local high street area in Redcar includes Station Road, which I believe ends in Redcar Central station—but I will leave the local knowledge to him. It is important to leave as much of the process as we can as local as possible.

I stress that in Committee, following the passing of the money resolution on 5 March, the Minister explicitly promised money on the table for drawing up reviews of up to three high street areas per local authority This money, for up to three designated high street improvement plans, will be on top of that from the various grant-makers with pots of national money—bodies that are scrutinised by this House—to which any designated high street might appeal to realise improvements and, in particular, to preserve the important heritage and iconic character of many of our high streets. It is right that Members should be closely involved in helping to deliver on improvement plans, developing place partnerships that enjoy local support, leveraging both local and/or national funding and optimising the co-ordination of existing funding towards a compelling sense of direction for our high streets.

On Second Reading, I told the House about the aims I had for the Bill; the House kindly indulged my half-hour speech covering the issues, and Members across the House offered various constructive comments that have led to further improvements and clarifications through amendments that I was able to secure in Committee. I was not intending to speak for quite as long today, but I think the Whips are encouraging me to do so, so I will indulge the House a little longer.

We enjoyed a comprehensive and informed debate on Second Reading. Thanks to suggestions from that debate, specifically from my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Daly) and the hon. Member for Reading East (Matt Rodda), the Bill was amended in Committee and now explicitly states that a high street can be designated to cover not just one road, but a collection of adjoining streets that are considered locally to be a high street area by virtue of the cluster of high street purposes served by those streets.

It is an important improvement to the Bill that it now specifically confirms that flexibility, which had only weakly been implicit in the right to vary designations and not explicit in making them in the first place. My aim has always been that the Bill should be demanding, but not onerous; it seeks to co-ordinate existing workstreams better, rather than add to net burden, and its provisions are deliberately as flexible as possible. It is vital for local communities to celebrate and preserve their local points of difference—all those things that make their particular high street a special place to be for residents and visitors alike.

[Dame Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech on an excellent Bill. Does he agree that the history and heritage of our town centres can be what really marks them out as different? Basingstoke is often seen as a new town, which could not be further from the truth. It has a 1,000-year-old market and was the birthplace of Jane Austen, the world’s greatest novelist. Does he agree that we should be making more of that history in our town centres?

[Jack Brereton]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that excellent point and I entirely agree: that heritage, that historical character of our high streets in particular, in many of our towns and cities right across the country, is so important and we need to make more of that heritage, particularly when thinking about attracting new uses to our high streets. Many of those heritage properties can be converted into excellent spaces for a whole range of new uses, attracting footfall and new businesses to the high street.

As I was saying, the Bill is also about ensuring that local authorities conform to a national requirement and that they undertake the process of designation, review and improvement in accordance with their local circumstances, with assistance from national datasets and best practice analyses that already exist and can be signposted through the Secretary of State’s guidance. Getting the balance right between local differences and national requirements is a concern. It was clear from colleagues that the original Bill, which specified that the local authorities should designate no more than three high streets, was not getting the balance right, and that the maximum number of high streets designated in each area should be a decision for each local authority. That change was secured in Committee; if local authorities wish to fund designations and reviews in addition to the three that will be funded by Government, they now can do so.

Of course, there will be numerous disagreements around which areas to designate as high streets and when. My own area is a city made up of six towns, and there are many other high streets right across north Staffordshire. There may well be spirited debate locally about how to improve them. There will even be disagreement, I am sure, about what the Secretary of State’s guidance should include and what central funding, if any, should be available. This Bill sets out a supportive and predictable framework in which such debates can and must take place, bringing the focus and direction that our high streets desperately need.

The Bill directly addresses a problem highlighted in December 2021 by the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee in its excellent report, “Supporting our high streets after Covid-19”, namely the absence of a plan for ensuring that local authorities have a capacity to develop effective place partnerships and place leadership. The Bill introduces the mechanism of designation and review, under guidance, and this is supported with national funding for up to three improvement plans that will be developed in partnership locally, led by local authorities.

I completely understand the reaction that local government often has when it feels as though it is being told it needs to do more. My background is at the coalface of local government policymaking. That is why I stress that the Bill seeks to get local government not so much to do more as to co-ordinate what it does better, with wider input and agreement, and a wider contribution of effort, in implementation and delivery from a range of interested partners in our high streets, ranging from community groups to our high street businesses. I am enthused by those authorities that can already see the benefits of having an improvement plan, and I am pleased that the money resolution means that the authorities that have been held back by the cost of formulating a plan will have that barrier removed.

The Bill provides the policymaking structure for motivating action in the use of the many powers that already exist and are at the disposal of local authorities, and in giving better accountability as to their use. The Bill ensures that our communities and high street businesses are empowered to call for the improvements that should be outlined in each plan.

Drug Reclassification: Monkey Dust

Debate between Jack Brereton and Maria Miller

Tuesday 1st November 2022 Westminster Hall

[Dame Maria Miller (in the Chair)]

I will call Jack Brereton to move the motion and then I will call the Minister to respond. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as is the convention for a 30-minute debate.

[Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the reclassification of the drug Monkey Dust.

It is a pleasure to speak with you in the Chair, Dame Maria, although this is not a pleasurable subject for debate. My aim is to see monkey dust, a new psychoactive substance that is currently a class B drug, reclassified as class A. There are compelling reasons for doing so. I have received considerable local support in my constituency for reclassification, including through the survey and petition that is currently live on my website, which calls for the reclassification of that horrific drug.

If I explain that up to two thirds of all monkey dust-related incidents in the west midlands region are reported to occur in Stoke-on-Trent, the House will understand why local feelings in my home city are running so high. Monkey dust is a class B drug from a set of stimulants known as cathinones, which include the class C drug khat. Unlike khat, which is a reasonably mild, natural stimulant, monkey dust is a powerful synthetic drug. It is a stimulant that can make the user euphoric or hallucinate, lose control of their body, become aggressive and/or fall into a deep depression. It is a fine off-white powder costing £10 to £15 per gram, with only 3 mg needed for a hit. That means that a hit can cost as little as £2 on the street, making it cheaper than alcohol. Its effects usually last a few hours, but they can last for several days.