The High Street

Nick Boles Excerpts

Tuesday 21st May 2013 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Nick Boles)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Davies. I congratulate the hon. Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk) on securing this debate. He brings huge authority to all our debates in the House because of his particular life experience and honest common sense. He is a forensic member of the Communities and Local Government Committee and I am already nervous at the prospect of facing him in a Committee sitting relatively soon.

We can start with some common ground—there may not have been a huge amount of it, but there is some—which is that the importance of our high streets is greater than purely economic. They are not simply businesses; they play a role in our communities as the hub of the social and cultural life of our towns. It is, therefore, important for all of us to find ways to help them adjust to change.

We have heard from all hon. Members who participated in the debate a wide range of stories about many situations, including the fact that people can buy three pairs of knickers for a pound in Hoxton market—I shall be taking up that offer soon, though for which purpose we will not describe now—and that my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) is cuter than a puppy’s nose. I think, Mr Davies, that you will agree that that is a fair description. However, it is interesting that, despite the variety of communities, economic circumstances and geographical locations that have been discussed, a number of common themes have emerged. That is because the changes taking place in our high streets and town centres are not just a reflection of the recent recession, devastating though that has been for some businesses, or of particular Government policies, though those policies over the years have had positive and negative effects, which I will go into, but are a result of some dramatic technological and behavioural changes taking place in society, of which I suspect we have seen only the beginning.

My starting proposition to all hon. Members who have taken part in this debate is that we cannot stand Canute-like and command the waves of technological and social change to turn back. That has been the approach of past Labour Governments in response to industrial changes. That has always been a disaster and has always cost the taxpayer a huge amount of money, and it has never saved anybody their jobs or their livelihoods.

We need to do what my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (John Pugh) suggested and help retailers and high streets, and the local authorities that govern them, to adjust to the shock of the new. The hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) mentioned ways that that is happening in her constituency. My hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) spoke about how his town is exploring interesting approaches to tempt new retailers, with new formats and new ways of serving the customer and giving them an offer that competes with the convenience of ordering stuff from their sofas.

What can the Government control and what can they not control? We need to mention business rates. The business rates system is simple. A single amount is raised that is uprated every year by inflation, but by no more, and the increase in a business rate on one business has to be matched by the decrease elsewhere on another business, because the total contribution to the Exchequer is the same and simply increases by inflation.

I say to the hon. Member for Rochdale that in the five years of the Labour Government’s last term, the total take from business rates went up by £4 billion and in the five years of this Government’s term it has increased by a bit more than £2 billion, so there has not been the swingeing increase in business rates that he tried to show. In the meantime, we have introduced a doubling of small business rate relief, which is extended until 2014. That is benefiting a huge number of small retailers. Although business rates will need to be taken into account with regard to the changes that we have been talking about—I do not suggest that the business rates system will not need to change over the medium term—there has been no shift under this Government that might explain the problems faced by our high streets.

Parking is a slightly more relevant issue, in terms of changes that have happened. When it is possible for people to buy whatever they need from their sofa, it needs to be easy and comfortable for them to buy something from a shop. I detected from the physical movements of Opposition Members that even they recognised that the last Labour Government’s policies on parking charges were entirely counter-productive. In backing a rise in parking charges to try to drive people out of their cars, they succeeded. People got out of their cars and got on to their laptops, on their sofas, and bought stuff that way. I am glad to hear many examples of far-sighted Conservative authorities cutting parking charges introduced by Labour authorities, thereby benefiting north Lincolnshire, in Brigg, Scunthorpe and other places, and tempting people back into town centres. That is a constructive approach.

Ultimately, central Government, and sometimes even local government, cannot pretend to themselves that they have within their gift the power to conjure a renaissance in our high streets. This Government believe that all we can do is try to anticipate what is happening and try to liberate, so that people can try out new ways of doing business, and back innovation. Through anticipation we can try to understand how the technological sea change that is taking place will affect people in future. My hon. Friend the Minister responsible for this area has set up the future high streets forum to explore the longer-term changes—perhaps slightly longer term than those addressed by previous studies of this problem.

It is in an attempt to liberate that we have introduced the temporary changes to the use class orders and will look at further changes to those orders, to make it easier for local authorities to decide that some retail frontages should benefit from greater permitted development rights. We are saying that no national Government, no planning Minister—neither I, nor the hon. Member for City of Durham (Roberta Blackman-Woods), should she ever succeed me in this position—and no other Minister can possibly determine what is the right use for a particular property. I would even go so far as to suggest that some local authorities are too slow to adapt to change. They would love, as in France, to declare that particular premises had to be preserved for ever for a baker or a butcher, but unfortunately this is not realistic. It does not work and the state of the French economy is proof enough of that fact. We have to liberate so that they can experiment.

That brings me to the various ways in which this Government are backing innovation, through the Portas pilots, the town team partners, the high street innovation fund and the high street renewal awards. All these measures are helping to back innovative ideas. It is no surprise to hear, yet again, from Labour Front Benchers that they consider the best way of measuring the success of a policy to be how quickly public money has been spent. We do not consider that a measure of success. We consider it prudent of those Portas pilots that have received grant from this Government but have not yet convinced themselves that they have a worthwhile investment to wait until they have worked out something that they think will make an impact.

It is simply not good enough to persist with the approach of the last Government, spraying money around, hoping that some of it will stick and make a difference. Every pound and penny is the earnings of a member of the British public and constituent, and that money should be spent only when the innovation it is supporting will deliver real change.

We all want our high streets to revive, but we should recognise that when they do so, that will be in many different forms across the country and will not look anything like anything any of us grew up with. We should not be afraid of that; we should embrace that future and back those who will bring it about.