The High Street

Jonathan Reynolds Excerpts

Tuesday 21st May 2013 Westminster Hall

[Simon Danczuk]

My response to the hon. Gentleman’s point is that the high street is too important to communities simply to be left to the free market. There is a requirement for intervention both nationally and locally.

It has been widely reported that many of the first and second-wave Portas pilots have spent hardly any money and some have spent nothing at all. Did Ministers not award the pilots to towns that already had ready-to-go plans to transform their high streets? At a time when urgent action was needed, everyone anticipated that the pilots would hit the ground running. Instead, most of them have withdrawn into a shell and are in a state of paralysis. It now looks as though some of the plans had been drawn up on the back of an envelope and were nowhere near viable. Can the Minister explain how long those pilots are supposed to last? Will they carry on struggling to put plans together indefinitely?

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing the debate and I praise the work that he has done in Rochdale. The debate has been quite partisan so far. I am a bit more favourable towards what the Government have done so far. I think that the Portas review was quite a good piece of work. However, I share my hon. Friend’s concern about where the money has been spent and the fact that it has not been spent in some towns. Our experience in Stalybridge is the opposite. We have done some great work, but without any resources. I just wonder whether the Government will be able to say something about how they might get resources to town teams who are doing very good jobs in their areas if places that have been pilots have not been able to do the things that they wanted to do already.

[Simon Danczuk]

That is an interesting intervention: if money is not being spent in some pilot areas, surely it could be moved to areas with more innovative approaches that are ready to hit the ground running. It would not be fair to tar all pilots with the same brush. I am aware of excellent work that is making a real difference in Market Rasen and Nelson, both of which have shown strong leadership and rich community engagement.

Given the problems, it is no wonder that the Co-operative Group recently—just this week—demanded a review of the Portas pilots. If ever a programme illustrated the disconnect between Whitehall and local communities, this is it. The e-mail exchange that has come to light between Mary Portas’s team and officials from the Department for Communities and Local Government serves to highlight the problems. An example of how Government officials let TV companies set public policy can be seen in an e-mail about local councillors and residents arguing over their high street. A member of Mary Portas’s team e-mailed the DCLG stating:

“In TV terms the fight between the bureaucrats and the passionate citizens could be great”.

That Government officials were having such a conversation beggars belief. The Portas pilots were supposed to be about improving local high streets, not creating arguments for argument’s sake to make good TV. Robin Vaughan-Lyons, chairman of the Margate town team said that people had been left in tears by the antics of Mary Portas’s film crew. He told The Grocer, not a publication given to sensationalist reporting, that they

“are a group of people who are more interested in publicity and being on TV than they are in helping Margate and they have been deliberately encouraged by the film crew to make personal attacks on us.”

We should all celebrate bringing together volunteers to form town teams, for which people give up their time freely to help make their community a better place to live. Surely that is what the Prime Minister envisaged as the big society in action. How disgraceful that Government officials colluded with a TV company to sow seeds of division in communities and stoke up resentment simply to create a dramatic storyline for an hour of tawdry TV. That is not the government by citizens for society that the Prime Minister promised us, but government for television. As one soap opera inspires another, the Minister who was responsible for high streets made sure that the Portas pilots spawned other funds and initiatives. The Government’s high street innovation fund is one such example.

In her review of December 2011, Mary Portas underlined what she wanted councils to do:

“This should be game-changing stuff and thoughtful engagement, not just the usual suspects round a table planning the Christmas decorations.”

How do Ministers square that, I wonder, with the fact that many thousands of pounds from the high street innovation fund has been spent by councils on Christmas lights and hiring Santa Claus and reindeer? Last month was the launch of high street champions, an initiative to support high streets by partnering them with large businesses, but only in the pilot towns. Obviously, it is good to see businesses working together, but I am not convinced that matching big national chains with independent businesses is the best approach.