High Streets
Debate between Melanie Onn and Gregory Campbell(3 weeks, 6 days ago)
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Mr Campbell
Yes, I agree. When I conclude, I will try to draw some of these threads together into a proposition that I hope the Minister will consider.
Charity shops and vaping shops are now prevalent on many of our high streets. I have sometimes been criticised, unfairly in my view, for being an arch-critic of the BBC. I do not regard myself as an arch-critic of the BBC: I always say that I commend it when it does well and criticise it when it does wrong or shows bias. If I am seeing more reasons to criticise it—well, I will leave people to pass judgment on which is more accurate. I have to say that in the past few months, though, BBC News has been excellent on vaping shops on the high street. It should not have been the BBC that had to do that work, but I am glad that it did.
Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman talks about the BBC investigation work that has been undertaken in recent months, which has exposed a huge amount of organised crime, including child sexual exploitation, money laundering and links to false asylum claims. Given how the fronts of these shops—so many of them are fronts—are tearing down legitimate businesses and making things so difficult for them, is it time to have a central agency to take responsibility, maybe under the guise of something like the national retail police?
Mr Campbell
I agree. If we are to see the clampdown that the Home Secretary has outlined, as I hope we do, the problems that we are discussing will not get better in the short term. There will be more vacant shops, because illegal shops will be put out of business. That is a good thing, but we need to ensure that there is no gap and we need to get life back into our town centres.