Oral Answers to Questions

Simon Danczuk Excerpts

Monday 3rd June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Clive Efford. Not here.

[Simon Danczuk (Rochdale) (Lab)]

7. What assessment he has made of progress made by the Portas pilots and their effect on high streets.

[The Minister for Housing (Mr Mark Prisk)]

This Government believe our high streets need to adapt to changing consumer habits, especially online shopping. The Portas pilots are test-beds for developing new ideas. They are part of a comprehensive approach designed to strengthen local leadership, reform planning and parking policies, help small shops and boost local markets.

[Simon Danczuk]

Ministers must acknowledge the huge discrepancy between the £20 million Ministers have spent on the Portas pilots and the fact that the Government have increased business rates for retailers by over £500 million in the past two years. With a recent survey showing that the UK has the highest business rates in the European Union, is it not time that the Government stopped treating the high street as a cash cow to milk to exhaustion?

[Mr Prisk]

Nothing has changed in rating policy. Ever since 1990, business rates have gone up by the retail prices index—it was the same under the Labour Government. It is right to say, however, that they are fixed overheads. That is why, unlike the Labour party, we have doubled the threshold for small business rate relief and taken a third of a million small businesses out of business rates altogether. I thought that the hon. Gentleman would welcome that.