Local High Streets

John Hemming Excerpts

Tuesday 21st December 2010 Westminster Hall

[Chris Skidmore]

I am sure that my hon. Friend will agree that the Mayor is a great visionary, and we can learn a lot from many of the ideas that he has proposed so far during his tenure.

[John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)]

On the question of a level playing field, does my hon. Friend agree that there is merit in the Government’s making a detailed study of the challenges for smaller businesses compared with multiples?

[Chris Skidmore]

Absolutely. I do not want to put across a message that we are anti-supermarket or anti-big business. This is about striking an appropriate balance between the two, and ensuring that small businesses are protected while at the same time ensuring that people in every constituency have choice—as they must.

I welcome the change in attitude displayed in the Government’s programme, which will seek to ensure a level playing field

“by enabling councils to take competition issues into account when drawing up their local plans to shape the direction and type of…retail development.”

In Kingswood, South Gloucestershire council has taken that message on board and made special provision for town centres and local high streets in its core strategy. It was also heartening to read the speech made by the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government on 2 November at the Heart of the Community conference, when my right hon. Friend stated

“we continue to support the ‘town-centres first’ policy, after all, a Conservative Government introduced it in 1996.”

That is something that the Conservative party, for one, has long campaigned on, and I look forward to hearing how the coalition Government will ensure that it takes place.

Above all, I welcome the local growth White Paper, which sets out the Government‘s economic ambition to build a fairer and more balanced economy driven by private sector growth within local communities. Indeed, it set out their commitment and belief that viable town centres are also key drivers of our economy. That can only benefit our local high streets, in particular by reforming the planning system so that it is driven by communities who want growth, rather than applying the system we inherited, which stifles development and innovation, and acts as a barrier to economic recovery.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)]

I ask for your guidance, Mr Gray. Are we aiming for 10.30 am for the Front Benchers?

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

I think 10.40 am, probably.

[John Hemming]

So there are 10 minutes each.

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

I want as many hon. Members as possible to contribute.

[John Hemming]

We have four wanting to speak, so that would be about eight minutes.

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman, but I think I can work that out for myself. Perhaps he would like to get on with his speech.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Hemming]

I have to work it out for myself to decide when to stop speaking. Thank you, Mr Gray. I congratulate the hon. Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore) on securing the debate and refer hon. Members to a declaration of interest as part-owner of MarketNet, an e-commerce operation running since 1994.

I would like to follow on from the hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry), because he made key points. A lot of this is driven by financial realities. Supermarkets have two advantages: no wholesaling, so they keep the whole of the margin, and an oligopsony—that is, the buying power allows them to drive down the prices at which they buy goods, which therefore allows them to compete financially, more so with shops that have to take the wholesale-retail route.

We have been trying for 11 years in Yardley to redevelop the Tivoli centre, where there used to be a shopping centre built on the site of an old cinema. Although the Labour councillors decided to vote to stop it recently, after 11 years we are finally getting a redevelopment of the Swan centre, or Tivoli centre, which should see another 600 jobs for the constituency. That plan is underpinned by Tesco, which I have supported, because I want to see the redevelopment of the site. The finances are such that we cannot redevelop that site without money coming in from somewhere. The community right to buy—a very good project—has to be underpinned by finances. The difficulty for high streets is how to deal with the fact that there has been a movement away from retail on the high street. That raises a number of issues, one of which is the dereliction. Look at the issue from the commercial landlords’ perspective: if they accept a lower rent, one difficulty is that they then have to devalue the property in their accounts. They do not want to do that because it could derail them to a much greater extent. We need to find an incentive, as we have for empty homes, for empty commercial properties so as to encourage people to recognise the realities of life and develop that.

There is a distinction between high streets and shopping centres such as Bluewater, which was referred to earlier. High streets are public spaces. We can have marches up and down them; we have loads of parades in Birmingham, all over the place. We do not have those in shopping centres; we have little things, because shopping centres are private spaces. That issue needs to be looked at, with the owners of shopping centres, as it devalues the community aspects. The great advantage of Acocks Green, like other places in Birmingham, is that it was based on a market right in the centre, in Digbeth, but is in fact an urban area developed out of a number of villages. All the villages have centres and, oddly enough, places such as the Yew Tree are bypasses of the village of Old Yardley. Houses have grown up where fields used to be between the villages. They are village centres that were owned by the communities. The shopping centres that have developed do not have that same community ownership, which is rather sad. That is something that local government and national Government should work on—trying to develop more community involvement and a general feeling that it is all part of our wider community. I accept that they are private centres—there is no question about that—but it is sad to lose that communal element.

Farmers’ markets, for instance, can really add to an area. There are many places in Birmingham with farmers’ markets, which are good to have. Their element of disorder—the word we use at the moment is “chaos”—means that they are not structured, but are all different. We are never quite sure what we are going to find; it is not all Café Rouge and Pizza Hut. There is a children’s song about Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pizza Hut, which those who have young children will know. Though that is a national song, it is nice to have the variety created by different organisations. It is good if someone sets up a retail outlet, creates new ideas and develops them.

However, we do have to come down to the finances—that is where the Government need to study to what extent there is a level playing field. As the footfall moves into the shopping centres, as it has done, the value is clearly no longer in the land values in high streets. The effect of the commercial financing is such that people do not want to accept a lower rent because they would have to devalue the asset. That leads to the dereliction that is damaging to the community in the wider sense. To that extent, I support the hon. Member for Banbury, in that we need to look at incentives to ensure that we do not have dereliction. I think I have probably said enough.