Business Improvement District Ballots: Digital Voting

Lord Jamieson Excerpts

Monday 20th April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend, particularly as she reminds me of the days when I was doing election monitoring in Moldova and Georgia, which was a fascinating experience. I very much appreciated then the work of the OSCE, and still do. She is quite right that we have to do all we can to make sure that voting is safe. I believe that the Representation of the People Bill is completing its Commons stages today and will come to our House in due course. Where good practice is developed and promoted by the OSCE and others, we will look at that with great interest.

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

My Lords, BIDs do much good work for our town centres, but this is being blown away by the massive damage caused to our town centres by higher national insurance contributions, higher business rates, increased minimum wages and employment regulation. For example, UKHospitality figures show over 100,000 job losses since this Government came to power. Will the Government recognise the impact of these damaging policies on our town centres and reverse course?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

The decline in our town centres—I speak from personal experience—started long before this Government came to power. Our Government are delivering on their manifesto commitment to protect the high street and rebalance the business rates system by introducing permanently lower tax rates for eligible retail, hospitality and leisure properties. We will bring forward our high streets strategy later this year.