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Retail Development Bill [HL]

My Lords, I do not like to say it, but the noble Lord went slightly beyond the privilege of an intervention, which rapidly became a speech. He could have put his name down for the debate and made his own speech. When the Bill goes into Committee, many of those points can be gone into in great depth. There is a need to create a specific mechanism of control that prevents the local authority from being undermined by the existing mechanisms, which are stupid and unfair on the public. It is an illusion that they help just the large numbers of people who visit supermarkets regularly and do not go near small shops. That is an illusion for the present which turns into a disaster for the future. France has more of those mechanisms, yet they do not penalise the supermarkets—there is healthy competition between them. They are now the equivalent of the big-shed groups that we have in this country, making up something like 45 per cent of the retail total. I speak to many officials in local authorities and central government in France, where there are strong trade unions to defend members’ interests, which is regarded as a sin in Britain. There are other mechanisms, too, and price controls in certain areas. The European Commission always looks closely at France to make sure that it does not breach European rules. However, irrespective of party—apart from on the extreme fringes—its attitude is to provide the necessary economic and social balance through these mechanisms. That is why the noble Lord needs to make his own speech. He could then provide his own suggestions for an appropriate mechanism. I shall say one more thing about the need for local interests to be better represented. If local councillors could do that properly within our system, that would be fine. I make no criticism of them; they are noble and heroic people, in many ways struggling with a very difficult and unpopular job. Most people do not want to be local councillors in most local authority areas—it is very sad—because central government has demoralised them so much. It started with the Conservative Government under the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, in the old days. The morale, ethos and élan of local government were destroyed by the Conservative Government’s attack not only on the Greater London Council, which I publicly opposed at the time, but also on other local authority mechanisms. One therefore needs the additional control system that is suggested in the Bill, or something along its lines. I am sure that my noble friend Lord Cotter will be the first to suggest improvements and modifications to the central ideas in the text. I commend him for many other aspects of the Bill. Few Peers are able to introduce a Bill that is so well drafted—I may embarrass him by saying so—and so full of persuasive content. It is on that note, therefore, that I plead with the Government to restore the morale of local councils by introducing some kind of support system and by giving a clear signal to the supermarkets that the days of wild, super-normal profits and bonanzas are over. Supermarkets must be responsible, rein back their enthusiasm and not destroy local communities.