Retail Sector
Debate between Greg Clark and Kate Green(5 years, 11 months ago)
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Greg Clark
My hon. Friend is exactly right about that. Of course many of our towns acquired shopping centres and shopping malls to make them more attractive at that time, which again was a big change. There is constant change in what the offer and draw of town centres is, and local authorities are very active in thinking about how they can make their places as attractive as they can.
According to the latest market data for the last five years, covering the period from 2013 to the end of 2017, 191 retailers in this country have gone into administration. That compares with the 202 that did so in the five years before, so we have not had the sudden collapse that the hon. Member for Salford and Eccles was hinting at. During the last five years, the number of stores affected by those failures was 7,429, compared with 19,639 in the previous five years. So it is very important that we do not paint a picture of British retail undergoing some sort of experience that has never happened before; we need to make sure that its dynamism results in positive outcomes and not regard this as completely out of the ordinary.
The hon. Lady cited examples of closures and, as I said, they are hugely hurtful and worrying for everyone caught up in them. However, she conspicuously failed to mention the other side of the equation. If she reads Retail Week in any given week, she will see example after example of stores that are opening and of companies that are expanding. She could have mentioned that just in January the Co-op committed that it will open 100 new stores during 2018, creating 1,600 jobs. Lidl is investing £1.45 billion in expanding its UK presence, and Aldi is now the fifth biggest retailer in the UK and it aims to have 1,000 stores by 2020. Lest anyone think that discount retail means discount wages, Aldi has pledged to become the UK’s highest-paying supermarket by 2020.
Our tastes and habits are changing. Home delivery from stores was once considered a relic of pre-war and immediately post-war times, but now it is increasingly standard for all the big supermarkets; Ocado has recently joined the FTSE 100 on the back of its growth. We have more and better choice through online retail than ever before, as colleagues have said. ASOS is now the UK’s largest clothing retailer by market valuation, and this week the British Retail Consortium showed that total retail sales increased substantially in May. The hon. Lady does the retail sector and the country a disservice by claiming that we are seeing an annihilation of the high street. We need to be much more practical and positive about the prospects.
However, our habits are changing. We are buying more and more each year— retail sales are buoyant—but we are choosing to buy more of that online, which of course provides a challenge. In 2007, 3% of total retail sales were bought online, yet in little more than a decade—by May this year—that had grown to 16.9%. That is a revolution in a short space of time. In the past 12 months alone, online sales rose by 11.9%, and clothing and footwear sales online rose by 24.1%. The consultants Oliver Wyman forecast that 40% of non-food retail sales will be online by 2030. That is how people are choosing to buy so, just as happened when supermarkets challenged individual shops, retail will look very different in the future. If we choose to buy 40% of goods online, not all the shops we have been used to will exist as they do today. As the British Retail Consortium says:
“We have too much retail space…there will be fewer shops and their role will be different”.
It says that they will be based on convenience fulfilment or, most likely, fulfilling a desire for experience and local community concentration. Those are the changes that the sector anticipates and wants to participate in.
Kate Green
I cannot dispute what the Secretary of State says about the changing patterns of online shopping. He made a comment earlier about the quality of employment in low-cost supermarkets. Does he accept that it is also important that those online retail settings offer excellent employment conditions? Too often we hear of exploitative practices in these warehouses and of the abusive treatment of workers, who are being denied toilet breaks and being asked to do heavy lifting without proper risk assessments having been carried out. They do that for very low wages.
Greg Clark
The hon. Lady makes an excellent point, and this was one of the reasons we commissioned the Matthew Taylor report, to which the hon. Member for Salford and Eccles referred. Knowing that employment patterns are changing and that different types of businesses are entering the market, it is right to consider what regulatory requirements we need in this new world to maintain the high standards we have insisted on in this country. That is the type of preparation—the strategic anticipation of what is required—that we are engaged in.
I applaud the way in which, in this time of adjustment, to prepare for the future, the retail sector is coming together, with its players working jointly. It has always been a rather fragmented sector, but in recent months we have seen a real sense of purpose in its coming together to work jointly with the Government and with local councils, as my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) said, to address the challenges it has faced.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Greg Clark and Kate Green(7 years, 5 months ago)
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Greg Clark
It would be a pleasure to meet my hon. Friend. One of the reasons why we have created the local enterprise partnerships and the growth deals is to make sure that the investment in infrastructure can go alongside economic development, and that is a big step forward.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
Greg Clark
The hon. Lady knows that when it comes to energy, it is very important that we have regard to the costs that are incurred by consumers, whether they are private residential consumers or businesses. That is why these decisions have to be taken to contain the costs that would be on bills.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Greg Clark and Kate Green(9 years, 9 months ago)
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Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
1. What steps the Government plan to take to increase the number of people registered to vote.
The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Greg Clark)
The House will know that on 10 June the Government launched online electoral registration, making registering to vote quicker and simpler than ever before. This is the biggest change to electoral registration in generations. Applying to go on the electoral register now takes as little as three minutes, and I can tell the House that it is proving to be a huge success. As of midnight last night, 93,000 applications have been made since 10 June, 93% have been made online, and 98% of those using the online service said that they were either satisfied or very satisfied with the experience.
Kate Green
The Minister will be aware of Mencap’s “Hear my voice” campaign, which is encouraging learning-disabled voters to engage with Members of Parliament in the run-up to the general election. He will also know that in 2001—the most recent election for which we have data—only one in three people with a learning disability exercised their vote. What more can the Government do to ensure both that this important group of voters are on the electoral register and that they exercise their voting right?
Greg Clark
I completely agree with the hon. Lady, who will know that Mencap has been funded specifically by the Government to carry out its important work in making sure that we correct that figure so that everyone takes up their right to vote, including those with learning difficulties.