Marcus Jones
Main Page: Marcus Jones (Conservative - Nuneaton)Future of Town Centres and High Streets
Marcus Jones Excerpts(12 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the matter of the future of town centres and high streets.
Let me begin by thanking the Chairman of the Backbench Business Committee, the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel), and her fellow colleagues on the Committee for granting this debate. I thank also hon. Members and Friends who supported the request for this debate at that Committee.
We all have at least one if not several town centres or high streets in our constituencies. I know that many right hon. and hon. Members share my passion for our town centres. For me, that passion was developed during my time as a local councillor and council leader, when I had responsibility for town centres during the deepest and darkest period of the recession. Our town centres are focal points for shopping and meeting friends and colleagues, as well as for accessing entertainment, leisure, culture, public services and transport among other things.
The economic and social contribution that our town centres make cannot be understated. High streets make up 13% of UK economic value and 14% of total UK employment. Unfortunately, over many years the position of our high streets and town centres has been eroded to varying degrees. Many of the stronger retail chains have squeezed out the individual small businesses from many high streets but are now retrenching owing to the economic conditions. They are becoming dependent on fewer and fewer stores and consequently are withdrawing from many of our town centres.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate, as well as on setting up the all-party group on town centres. Does he agree that one way of regenerating town centres is, as happens in my constituency, to give tax incentives to areas that are trying to regenerate themselves and to independent shops and small businesses so that they can set up, as opposed to only the chains coming into every high street across Britain?
Mr Jones
I certainly think that we at least need to put our town centres and high streets on a level playing field with other parts of the retail industry. We need to be as innovative as possible to make sure that taxes are as low as possible for people who want to operate on our high streets.
Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)
I commend the hon. Gentleman on his success in securing the debate. Dudley town centre has seen better days; it is just a few miles up the road from the Merry Hill shopping centre. Does he agree that Dudley town centre would be ideal for one of the pilot studies resulting from Mary Portas’s review? Does he agree that the Minister should select Dudley for one of the pilots and that the Minister ought to come to Dudley so that I can take him around the town centre and he can see for himself the problems we face?
Mr Jones
Dudley is an important area and the hon. Gentleman makes a strong case for it, but I think it probably ranks somewhere behind my constituency in relation to this matter.
In the last few days alone, we have seen some long-standing store chains, such as Blacks Leisure, Peacocks and Barratts, all enter administration. In the words of Mary Portas,
“our high streets have reached a crisis point,”
a statement with which I am sure many people up and down the country will agree.
A number of factors have led to the decline of our high streets, although the main reasons are undoubtedly the steady rise of out-of-town retail shopping malls, together with the dramatic impact of the arrival of internet shopping, which has soared. Back in 2007, it accounted for 4.8% of retail sales, but last November it was found to account for 12.2%. That is a challenge to our town centres, and it will be greatly exacerbated by the increased use of mobile phone technology, which is broadening the internet spectrum.
Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend for securing this very important debate. May I share with him the experience of my local town of Leek, where the totally locally Leek initiative has been developed by independent shopkeepers? The idea is that if everybody who lived in Leek spent £5 each week in a local shop rather than on the internet, it would be worth £4 million to the local economy. Does he agree that we need initiatives such as that to promote local high streets?
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
My hon. Friend eloquently lays out the reasons why many town centres are falling on hard times. Has he noted Mary Portas’s remarks about the motor car? In market towns, and in rural areas, a car is no luxury, and it is essential for the vibrancy of those towns that there is adequate parking. What does he feel about that and, in particular, Portas’s remarks about a league table for car parks?
Mr Jones
My hon. Friend makes an extremely sensible point. For far too long, we have not thought about the people who want to drive into our town centres and we have not considered the quality and availability of car parking. We have certainly not considered its cost, which I shall come to later. It is extremely prohibitive and is one reason why there is not a level playing field for our town centres in relation to their out-of-town competitors.
In my constituency, Nuneaton town centre has fared reasonably well, and better than many. There is a property vacancy rate of about 6% while the national average is 11.1%, although the factors I have mentioned account for a vacancy creep that is happening at different rates across the country. Many of the factors in my analysis of the reasons for decline may be a little simplistic, but what we do to arrest that terminal decline is far from simple.
Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this important debate. Is he aware of a study by Transport for London showing that the average retail spend per month is £373 for people who walk to their high street but only £226 for those who take their car? Similar studies show that those who cycle or take the bus or train spend more than those who drive.
Mr Jones
My hon. Friend makes a reasonable suggestion, but there is a difference between travel in the London area and the situation in other regions of the UK. I can certainly say that far more people who shop in my local town centre in Nuneaton drive there than use local transport, so we have to be pragmatic.
Dan Byles (North Warwickshire) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that people who do not go to the town centre at all because they cannot walk or drive spend nothing at all?
Mr Jones
That is a sensible if not obvious point, and it is important.
As for how we address that decline, I welcome the review that the Government have instigated and their decision to commission the Portas review, which has not just brought the views of Mary Portas, a recognised retail guru, to the high street but has served to stimulate much-needed debate on this crucial issue. I was delighted that Miss Portas took time when researching the report to hold a discussion with the all-party group which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) mentioned, I chair. The meeting was nearly as well attended as this debate, which highlights the importance of our town centres and high streets to parliamentarians and their constituents.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does he welcome what is happening in Wellingborough and Rushton, where the Government’s economic policies are being enforced with great gusto? We have free car parking, and a new Marks and Spencer is opening in Wellingborough. A multi-billion pound project is hopefully about to open in the Rushton area providing jobs and local availability for shopping.
John Howell (Henley) (Con)
I agree that my hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. Does he agree that the neighbourhood planning provisions in the Localism Act 2011 give local communities a greater say for the first time in helping to shape the sort of town centres that they need and want?
Mr Jones
That vision is certainly significant and, along with the national planning policy framework provisions such as the “town centre first” policy, it is extremely important. I shall come on to that in a moment.
I shall go through some of the Portas proposals in more detail but, before doing so, I should like to quote the final words of the review:
“Those are just my ideas. What are yours?”
I hope that it is in that spirit that right hon. and hon. Members will use the focus of today’s debate to feed into the work of the Portas review through their own constituency experience, which should serve to inform Ministers’ thinking before they make their response and implement any policies following that crucial review.
I will briefly mention one or two points from the five groups of recommendations in the Portas proposals. I very much welcome the idea of a town team. Many constituencies have town centre partnerships or business improvement districts, and I was personally involved in setting up a town centre partnership in the town of Bedworth in the neighbouring North Warwickshire constituency when I was council leader. The concept of the town team represents a shift in thinking.
Dan Byles
As my hon. Friend and neighbour has mentioned the town of Bedworth in my constituency, may I take the opportunity to thank him for doing that work when he was leader of the council? Bedworth is one of those towns that are linked to a larger town in the borough, and was sometimes considered, for want of a better word, the slightly poorer neighbour by the council.
Mr Jones
My hon. Friend makes an extremely important point. With regard to the local shopping on offer, Bedworth is an extremely important player, even if it is not as large or always as vibrant as Nuneaton.
Town centre teams would give more teeth and opportunity for more detailed public-private sector engagement, which could go beyond the operational, micro issues, that town centre partnerships and BIDs deal with, and cover strategic issues, helping to shape the vision for our town centres. The proposal would allow landlords to become investors in town teams or super-BIDs, and would seek to strengthen that vision for town centres with the possibility of leveraging in further private investment. The all-party group secretariat, the Association of Town Centre Management, very much advocates that approach and is convinced that there is real will on the part of the private sector to make a major contribution to this.
Dame Joan Ruddock (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. Does he agree that if we are trying to attract investment, the proliferation of betting shops taking over premises from the closure of banks and building societies, which has happened in Deptford high street in my constituency, is a disincentive and spoils the diversity of our high streets, which is so important and which we need to hold on to or bring back?
Mr Jones
Betting shops are an important part of our town centres and high streets, as I am sure the right hon. Lady would acknowledge, and they offer valuable employment. However, the proliferation of betting shops has been caused to some extent by the provisions of the licensing legislation in relation to the number of machines that such businesses can have. That needs looking at and Mary Portas refers to it in her report.
Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)
In addition to the proliferation of betting shops, there has been a proliferation of high-cost credit lenders on our high streets, which prey on some of the most vulnerable members of society. Will my hon. Friend join me in congratulating Medway council, which has established a cross-party working group to look at how the council can get involved in ensuring that the licensing of those money-lending shops is controlled and reduces the possible damage to the most vulnerable members of society?
Mr Speaker
Order. Before the hon. Member for Nuneaton (Mr Jones) responds, let me say, first, that he has been speaking for 14 minutes. I am sure many Members have been greatly enjoying his speech, and I am sure the hon. Gentleman has been enjoying it, but there are nearly 50 Members who wish to speak and to whom a time limit applies, so I hope he is bringing his remarks to a conclusion. Secondly, the frequency with which he gives way is a matter for him, but he might want to bear that in mind. Thirdly, interventions are too long.
Mr Jones
Thank you, Mr Speaker, for that guidance. I will try to keep my remarks brief and to keep interventions to a minimum.
Starting new enterprise is crucial on our high streets, particularly with many of our chain stores retrenching. We need to reinvigorate our independent shopkeepers. Street markets and indoor markets are an important route to doing that. In my constituency we have an award-winning street market on Wednesdays and Saturdays which often has more than 150 stalls. As in the case of car parking, which I shall come to shortly, local authorities must be careful to make sure that markets are not just cash cows and income generators for the local authority, but are there for the benefit of the local community and the local town centre.
That brings me to ways of allowing businesses to flourish. Lower taxation and less regulation are the keys to unlocking that potential, although we should be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water. Through deregulation—for example, the deregulation of pedlars—we could end up with a situation where pedlars can turn up and trade alongside market traders, without paying any rent or rates. The market traders who have traditionally been on our high streets will find themselves at a disadvantage.
Car parking is a major issue. There is a case study in the Portas review that mentions Swindon, and my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) will probably elaborate on that. Although I acknowledge the restraint on both Government and local government budgets, further direct action on car parking charges must be explored. It would be fantastic if a pilot scheme could be run to see whether we could bring in free short-stay parking that would have the effect that we are looking for. The pilot should be run in a constituency, and I would make the argument for that to be my Nuneaton constituency, but other right hon. and hon. Members probably have other ideas on that.
There is also an inherent unfairness in how the business rates regime applies to town centre car parks and out-of-town-centre car parks, and we need to look at that carefully to ensure that we allow our town centres to operate on a level playing field. As Mary Portas rightly pointed out, we need to look carefully at planning in our town centres. My hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) mentioned the national planning policy framework, and we must ensure that the “town centre first” policy and the sequential test are retained in the framework. I also think that it is important that office development is included, because although we must not deny out-of-town development, we must ensure that it is proportionate and meets the needs of a particular area.
I note your comments about time, Mr Speaker, and appreciate that many right hon. and hon. Members wish to speak. By bringing the matter before the House, I sincerely hope that we will have a positive debate, that our views will prevail and that the Minister will go away loaded with positive ideas from Back-Bench Members that can be fed into the Government’s review. I firmly believe that the British people instinctively wish to see our high streets and town centres not only survive, but flourish and prosper, as they form one of the unique components that make up the UK.
Mary Macleod (Brentford and Isleworth) (Con)
Will my hon. Friend join me in commending the Mayor of London, who today announced £177 million of targeted regeneration investment for town centres and local high streets, of which Brentford and Isleworth will receive £4.8 million?
Mr Jones
That is fantastic news, and just the sort of support that our town centres and high streets need. It is extremely important that we support our high streets and town centres not only as Members of Parliament, but as individuals, and that at all times we promote their cause so that they are there for hundreds of years to come, as they have been for us all thus far.
Rory Stewart
I agree absolutely. That is why the argument that we have to make is not an easy one. We have to make it because everybody in this Chamber—indeed, everyone in this country—believes deeply in the value of our high streets and market towns. It is not an easy argument to make because in terms of price, market competition and, fundamentally, choice, it is difficult to continue to defend the high street. In order to do so, we need to reach for more imaginative arguments.
We need to explain, above all, the value of public space. The great thing about any high street or market town is that it offers somewhere that is different from the workplace and the home: a civic space in which one interacts with other people. The point of it is not simply a shopping or retail experience, but those innumerable miniature encounters and exchanges of advice and wisdom that create the warp and weft of a community. That is a huge capital resource that we rely on when we talk about the big society, when we look for voluntary activity or when we fight for our local assets, such as in Penrith where we are fighting to save our cinema. We need that local identity and it is conveyed primarily in our lives through the experience of a town or high street.
Mr Marcus Jones
Does my hon. Friend agree that the ambience and experience of the town centre is extremely important? The town centre manager in Nuneaton has a strong track record of putting on entertainment such as Punch and Judy shows, theatre shows, mini opera companies and brass bands. Does my hon. Friend agree that such things add to the ambience and experience when people go to our town centres?
Rory Stewart
Absolutely. Of course, that is a central insight of this debate: a town centre is not simply about a shopping or retail experience, but about a much broader community experience that can range from puppets to the visual elements and even the aesthetics. One reason that Appleby in my constituency is such an appealing place is its architecture. The extraordinary asymmetry and symmetry of our red sand stone, the castle on the top of the hill, the Moot hall and the market cross create something that it would be impossible to replicate in a modern retail space. Those things are not about shopping.
The other important point from Nuneaton is local leadership, which is what we need to represent a town centre and compete with an incredibly able retail manager at a Tesco or Waitrose. That is why we should look again at local democracy and elected local mayors. If we ask why a French town is vibrant and able to say no to a local supermarket, whereas in Penrith a Sainsbury’s appeared even though I reckon 90% of the community opposed it, we realise that a great deal of that is due to the lack of a local leader and champion, the elected mayor, who can say no.
We can also do an enormous amount to support councils by getting rid of regulations and ensuring that if, for example, Penrith wished to challenge the supermarket, it could be confident in the judicial review process and confident that the planning laws would suit it. There could perhaps even be insurance if it were defeated, so that it did not feel horribly financially exposed.
Finally, and most importantly for Conservative Members, we must understand that this is a fundamentally conservative campaign in the best sense of the word. It is not about a grand vision of central planning and rationality, or a notion that some expert in a capital, or in Tesco’s headquarters, can define exactly what is required for every community. It is about taking what is already there—our historic inheritance. It is often an inconvenient inheritance for parking, rates or the space for shops, but we can make something of that history and tradition. Above all, we can have not simply shopping but a sense of the warp and weft, the interaction and the human spirit of community that once made us proud to be called a nation of shopkeepers, which will be difficult to retain without any shops at all.
Oliver Colvile
I fully agree, and licensed premises are also incredibly important. We now have more licensed premises in Plymouth city centre than there are in the whole of Liverpool, which is quite a striking fact given that the population of Plymouth is about 250,000 and Liverpool’s is significantly bigger. There has been a tendency for local authorities of all political parties in the area to move the culture of Union street, of which those who know Plymouth will be aware, out to Mutley Plain and the Barbican. That has had real implications, including for the local police’s work to maintain law and order. We need a much more balanced approach.
When I was working commercially—Members will be delighted to know that I am not any more, although I do have an interest in my own business—I was aware of how defensive some landowners could get about looking after their stakeholdings. They wanted to ensure that if there was development, it would not affect their commercial interests badly. There was one city in the south of England where we did a lot of work, and I had a client there who owned about £40 million of assets in the town centre. He had great difficulty in talking to the local authority and getting it to work with him to develop his part of the town. It became a very big problem, and it ended up with the local authority trying to get his land by compulsory purchase order, with all the implications that went with that. It is very important that local authorities should not try to be developers by proxy, because that is a disaster. It has delayed the regeneration of that town by a significant time.
Mr Marcus Jones
Will my hon. Friend comment, on the basis of the professional expertise that he has just outlined, on the suggestion that we heard earlier that the abolition of the upward-only rent review might benefit the regeneration of our town centres?
Oliver Colvile
We need to do everything we can to encourage as much footfall as possible in town centres. If I were a retailer, I would want people passing by to come into my shop. One thing that I learned at a very early stage when I got involved in the whole business of development was that planners liked to have one anchor store at one end of the town and another at the other end. I think that is quite a positive story, because people end up walking from one side of the town to the other and doing their shopping in the small shops in between.
I am very keen to ensure that town centres are the major places in which we encourage investment, but we must understand that in so doing we put up rents and some smaller shops cannot operate. We need to encourage people to set up niche businesses, such as bakers, butchers, fishmongers and so on.
We must ensure that we deliver a master plan approach. When development is taking place in our towns, we need to look at the sites and get the local community involved in making the decision on what they want there. There must be community benefits. When I gave advice to developers, including Sainsbury’s, I would always say, “When you are looking at your campaign, you have to consider what consumers and electorates will think is in it for them,” which means developing good community consultation. We have worked hard on that key aspect in my constituency.
Conservatives have a good story to tell. After all, Nicholas Ridley introduced the planning process in the first place, and John Gummer, as Secretary of State for the Environment, introduced the concept of planning policy statements—we are now on PPS 4, which is on ensuring that stuff goes into the town centre. We have a good story to tell, but there is further to go. I very much encourage my right hon. Friend the Minister to ensure that the Portas report is used and implemented.
Mr Marcus Jones
When I originally thought about applying to the Backbench Business Committee to hold this debate, I considered applying for a three-hour debate. However, my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) persuaded me to request a six-hour debate instead. I was persuaded, but I was concerned that we might not be able to fill up the time. I must have underestimated the concern and support of hon. Members for their town centres. It has been wonderful to hear some 50 colleagues make such profound and important contributions about their town centres. For once, I am glad to have been proved wrong. I am pleased that I managed to secure a full-day debate.
I must admit—this has been mentioned by several hon. colleagues—that I enjoyed travelling the length and breadth of the country with them, hearing the trials, tribulations and triumphs of hon. Members and their constituencies, town centres and high streets. Among all the comments, however, what really struck me was the passion of many hon. colleagues for their town centres. It is important now that we put that passion into meaningful action. I know that my right hon. Friend the Minister listened intently to much of the debate, as did his colleagues, and I am convinced that he will—