Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to improve productivity growth in the retail and hospitality sectors.

Latest figures for Q3 2018 show that labour productivity per hour in the Retail Sector has increased by 6.3% since the third quarter of 2017 and 14.0% on the third quarter of 2010.

Raising productivity is one of the Government’s key priorities and core to the UK’s Industrial Strategy. This department is currently undertaking a review of the actions that could be most effective in improving the productivity and growth of small and medium-sized businesses in all sectors.

Further, the Government has been working very closely with the Retail Sector through the industry led Retail Sector Council which was established a year ago and has recently agreed its priority workstreams for the next two years.

The council was established to bring Government and industry together to boost the sector’s productivity, and the priority areas were selected by the industry and each workstream will be led by a senior industry figure. The workstreams are; costs to business, skills and lifelong learning, employment, consumer protection, the circular economy and the Industrial Strategy.