Peter Dowd
Main Page: Peter Dowd (Labour - Bootle)Department Debates - View all Peter Dowd's debates with the Home Office
(1 month, 2 weeks ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Peter Dowd (in the Chair)
We have 10 or 12 people, including the Minister and Opposition spokespersons, wishing to speak. There are lots of people here, and I am sure there will be lots of interventions. I will therefore impose a four-minute limit on speeches, but that will have to be reduced if we have too many interventions. I have fired the starting gun.
Alex Ballinger (Halesowen) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the matter of tackling illicit activity in high street shops.
It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Dowd. Before I start, I want to put on the record my thanks to my hon. Friends the Members for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn) and for Leigh and Atherton (Jo Platt), who have been leading the dodgy shops campaign in Parliament. I am pleased to see that there are 50 MPs working to support this important issue. My hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes could not make it here today, but I will raise some of the issues that she asked me to raise.
High streets are at the centre of our communities. When our constituents look at them, they judge how our towns feel and how they feel about our towns. In Halesowen constituency, people want to see our high streets succeed. We have many independent and successful shops such as Bella’s Beautiful Things in Halesowen, Betty Stitchkit in Quarry Bank, and Cradley Heath DIY in Cradley Heath. We also have fantastic community groups that work hard to make our towns beautiful, such as Halesowen in Bloom and Cradley Heath and Old Hill in Bloom, whose volunteers do fantastic work.
But the truth is that, as the challenges to retail have increased, old established shops are closing and new shops are popping up in their place: vape shops, mini-markets and barbers. Although the majority of those shops are perfectly legitimate, there is increasing evidence that what the public suspect is true: many are involved in money laundering, counterfeit goods and other criminality. In fact, the Chartered Trading Standards Institute, whose members are on high streets every day, tells me that in some areas up to half of mini-markets and vape shops have links to organised crime.
Several hon. Members rose—
Peter Dowd (in the Chair)
Order. Everyone who wishes to speak is bobbing. Because of the number of hon. Members who have indicated that they wish to speak in the debate, and with the authority of the Chairman of Ways and Means, I am imposing a time limit on Back-Bench speeches of four minutes.
Paulette Hamilton
My hon. Friend makes a vital point. It needs to be joined up. The one thing I have learned from being an MP and seeing things work in my area is that when we work together, we get things done.
Organised criminal networks are operating across multiple organisations and exploiting vulnerable individuals. That is why we need stronger and faster closure powers, better support for trading standards teams and greater accountability for landlords who repeatedly rent properties to those engaged in illicit activity. I welcome the Government’s work to date, but I ask the Minister what further support the Government will provide to build on the success of operations such as Fearless and Skybridge at a hyper-local level. What steps will be taken to ensure that local authorities and police forces have the long-term powers and resources they need to tackle organised criminal activity on our high streets once and for all?
Finally, how will the Minister work with local authorities and other agencies to tighten our planning and licensing rules, to stop unscrupulous landlords doing what they have been doing and getting away with for so many years? Residents tell MPs that it is lawless up there, because there is nothing they can do.
Peter Dowd (in the Chair)
I remind hon. Members to be as brief as possible with their interventions. We should just get everyone in with the four-minute time limit.