Economy: High Street Trade

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Tuesday 10th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord makes a good point. One of the things that councils observe is that we need more shoppers in our local high streets and not more shops, hence the expansion into some of the excellent food offers in markets now and some of the conversions from office to residential that help to revitalise the footfall in local high streets, particularly in the north of England where I am.

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords—

[Lord Grade of Yarmouth (Con)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

My Lords, there can be only one of us standing up at any one time. Thank you. We have not heard from the Cross Benches. After hearing from them I suggest that we go to my noble friend Lord Grade.

[Lord Bilimoria]

My Lords, I have been a non-executive director of Booker, the FTSE 250 company, for eight and a half years. When I started our internet sales were £50 million. Today, out of a turnover of £5 billion, they are £1 billion. Surely the answer is to help the high street to take advantage of the internet age. What are the Government doing to help retailers to take advantage of the internet, whether on payments, winning customers or dealing with their suppliers and the supply chain?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord is absolutely right that the digital age has in many cases been to the high street’s advantage. I have mentioned click and collect. Our local high street businesses have to compete in the digital era and we have recently announced a digital pilot programme across Gloucestershire working with partners in the private sector including Argos, IBM and Cisco. This work was developed in close collaboration with the BIS retail unit.