Industrial Action

Debate between Meg Hillier and Grant Shapps

Tuesday 10th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

I am pretty sure the hon. Gentleman has been in the Chamber from the beginning, otherwise you would not have called him to speak, Mr Deputy Speaker. He will therefore have heard me say, not once or twice but three times now, that this legislation is compatible with the International Labour Organisation rules that the unions themselves sign up to and many of our European neighbours follow. I am struggling to follow the hon. Gentleman’s argument that this is somehow unfair, undemocratic or against international law.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

From the way the Secretary of State is speaking, one might think he is the knight on a white charger coming to rescue the system. Let us be clear, however, that it was this Government who froze pay in the public sector and then increased it below inflation, and this Government who reduced recruitment in the national health service, particularly among nurses, where we have a recruitment gap of 40,000. What we are actually hearing is chickens coming home to roost, isn’t it? He ought to take responsibility as a Minister in this Government.

[Grant Shapps]

I simply make the point that it is not the case that we have frozen recruitment, because we have 44,000 more nurses, not fewer—that is an increase rather than a decrease. It is also not the case that we have frozen pay, other than during the aftermath of the financial crash, which as I recall happened under the Labour party and we had to pick up the pieces, and through covid, although not all the way through covid, as I mentioned. Last year, even while the rest of the public sector was experiencing a pay freeze, we made an exception for NHS workers and paid them more, so the hon. Lady’s narrative is simply not true. Again, if the Opposition are saying that they would pay 19% more, I do not understand where that money would come from and whose taxes would be raised to pay for it and the increased interest rates.

Thomas Cook

Debate between Meg Hillier and Grant Shapps

Wednesday 25th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

I certainly will. The hon. Gentleman’s question has helped to highlight the issue, and I will do my best to do the same.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

It would be helpful if the Secretary of State set out the cost to the taxpayer of Operation Matterhorn so far and what likelihood there is, realistically, of getting money back from individual people’s travel insurance.

[Grant Shapps]

Broadly speaking, we know that the previous Monarch operation was £50 million, and this issue is probably about twice the size, so that indicates a cost of some £100 million.

Future of Town Centres and High Streets

Debate between Meg Hillier and Grant Shapps

Tuesday 17th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

My hon. Friend is right. Nothing did more damage to local areas than those hated regional spatial strategies. As everyone knows, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has already written to local authority leaders and the Planning Inspectorate confirming that we will abolish those regional planning strategies. That letter was immediately material consideration, but we now intend to lay the orders from the 2011 Act, which will mean that they will finally be gone. I can therefore tell my hon. Friend that policies and proposals from the once-emerging regional spatial strategies should carry very little weight indeed in the minds of anybody involved in our planning system today.

[Meg Hillier]

I hope the Minister gets to the betting shops issue, which is not a party political one—I lobbied the previous Labour Government on it. Will he answer the question asked in the debate? Will the Government give fair wind this Friday to the private Member’s Bill promoted by my right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Dame Joan Ruddock), which would radically change our high streets?

[Grant Shapps]

There were many detailed recommendations in the report, and I am looking with great interest at the one on betting shops. I sense the impatience that has been expressed today for a response to Mary Portas’s recommendations, and I can assure hon. Members that they will not have to wait terribly long to find out what our response will be. We have promised to deliver it by the spring, and we absolutely intend to do so; the hon. Lady will not have to wait very long at all—and I can confirm that I mean spring 2012.

We intend to provide a very energetic response to the Portas review. The Government like what she has said, and we have already started to implement a number of her recommendations. I will be coming back to give greater detail on the other items that we have not so far covered, but we have a generally positive attitude towards the report. It is also true to say, however, that in order for her recommendations to work, it would not be sufficient for us simply to put in place all 28 of them. Hon. Members and others should not expect a universal recovery in the high street simply as a result of such action. Retail is much more complex than that, and we need to get to the heart of the reasons that it has suffered so badly.

Hon. Members mentioned the fact that there are two essential factors. The first is the growth of the internet, as recognised by Mary Portas. The second is the growth of the out-of-town shopping stores; again, the report recognises that factor. Both those factors are here to stay, no matter what we do. No one can legislate to get rid of the internet, or to do away with the out-of-town stores. The advantages of the existing high streets therefore need to be played up. The first is the ability of people shopping in the high street to touch and feel products does not exist when they are shopping online, although they could still do that in an out-of-town store.

The second advantage is perhaps more significant. It is the ability to meet, communicate and enjoy a coffee with friends, and to go to other facilities that are based in the same location. Such facilities could include a local library or, as my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton said, a theatre. The high street provides a sense of community and well-being that I will wager could never be provided by the out-of-town stores. They simply do not provide that sense of community and belonging that has been so vividly described by Members across the House today. I have visited many of their constituencies in my role as Housing Minister, and I look forward to visiting many of them again. We have been given a wonderful tour of the country today, and we look forward to seeing those high streets revived. The one pledge that will go out from the Government is that, in addition to implementing as much of the Mary Portas review as possible, we will ask Members from across the House to lead the debate and the renaissance in their constituencies in the months to come just as passionately as they have done in the Chamber today.