High Street Regeneration and Unlawful Storefronts

Debate between Robbie Moore and Sadik Al-Hassan

Tuesday 30th June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Robbie Moore (Keighley and Ilkley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Vaz. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Bradley Thomas) for securing this important debate. Our high streets are facing huge challenges at the moment. Nationally, fiscal pressures have been put on them—employer national insurance contributions, the minimum wage, the business rates increase—and the Employment Rights Act 2025 is making it even more challenging for many of our high street businesses to take on young people. Then, of course, we have the tourism tax, or holiday tax, coming down the line.

[Sadik Al-Hassan]

I have been a pharmacist and an employer for nearly two decades, and nearly every good business was already doing what is in the Employment Rights Act to recruit staff. Recruiters need to offer those things. It is simple.

[Robbie Moore]

Then why on earth legislate and introduce further regulations that impose much more of a burden on our high street businesses? That is exactly what businesses are telling me, that this legislation is making it more costly to do business.

The tourism tax will tax businesses in Ilkley and Haworth, imposing much more of a burden on them for less money to be spent locally. What does that do? It gives our Mayor of West Yorkshire more power to use my area as a cash cow for money to be spent in other areas across West Yorkshire, rather than investing it in my constituency.

Locally, Bradford council has imposed car parking charges across the whole of my district, including for on-street parking, which is making it much less attractive for people to come and spend money in Ilkley. A petition signed by 4,000 residents was submitted to Bradford council, but the council went ahead regardless. It costs £3,000 to £10,000 to install a parking machine. In the village of Addingham, which has only 18 parking spaces, it will take decades before the council starts making any money.

My simple request to the Minister—and indeed to Bradford council, which I hope is listening—is to remove those parking charges, take away the cost to visitors and residents who want to spend their money locally, and back our businesses. We are fed up with being used as a cash cow for the rest of Bradford to benefit at our expense.