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Retail Development Bill [HL]

My Lords, surely the noble Lord, Lord Cope, with his experience, can see the difference between a Glasgow Liberal and a Manchester Liberal. I welcome the Bill and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Cotter, who has been a long-standing champion of small business, on providing the basis for such a useful debate on such an important topic. We are talking about an important part of the British economy. The retail sector accounts for some 20 per cent of the UK economy, so we need to get the balance right in a number of ways. We need to provide a structure that encourages the small retailer while not increasing the burdens on both business and local authorities. The habit of government in recent years of adding responsibilities to local authorities without providing resources and then bemoaning rate rises has already been referred to. We need to get that balance right. We also need to get the balance right between the large retailer and the small. The noble Lord, Lord Cotter, and the noble Earl, Lord Glasgow, emphasised the community benefit of small retailers, which cannot be overstated. We must not be too nostalgic, however. I declare an interest as director-general of the Retail Consortium in the mid-1980s, when my standard speech was to say that you cannot make water flow uphill and you cannot make shoppers shop where they do not want to shop. I still think that that is true. I also had a wonderful speech about the new shopping leisure experience, which used to amuse my wife, since wild horses could not drag me out shopping. I was the ““wham bam thank you mam”” type of shopper, but I was assured that shopping had moved into a new era of the leisure experience, and I think that that is true. Although the noble Earl, Lord Glasgow, may be right that people often think of big supermarkets and out-of-town supermarkets as baddies, there is no doubt that in my lifetime we have seen a shopping revolution for the better. You can see the impact for consumers from the poorest to the richest. You only have to look at pre-war photographs, in which you can tell who were working people and who were wealthier, simply by their dress. That is not so today: people can go to the big supermarkets and retail outlets and get their suits—the same applies to food. If you go to any of the poorer boroughs of London and go into a supermarket, you can see what a range of food is available. So let us acknowledge, as the noble Earl, Lord Glasgow, and the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, did, that our retail industry is a success story. We have one of the most efficient and competitive retail industries in the world. However, no one can rest on their laurels. In the mid-1980s, when shopping centres were being developed, the main task of the developer was to try to attract a Boots, a Marks & Spencer and a Sainsbury’s. Those were the three flagships, but all three of them have in the past 20 years gone through some very choppy waters. At the time, Tesco was still in its ““pile it high and sell it cheap”” stage. So retailers are in a very competitive business and they are only as good as their reputation today and tomorrow—they cannot rest on their laurels. There is no doubt that shopping malls and out-of-town and edge-of-town centres respond to real demand, but we know, too, that such expansion has its downsides. The noble Lord, Lord Cotter, referred to what in the United States is called ““doughnutting””—drawing and sucking out all retail activities from the centres of towns, so that town centres become dead. You can drive through them and see them boarded up and dead, which is not good for any community. I was pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Graham, intervened and I wish that he had put his name down to speak, because the co-operative movement has a role to play in some of the problems that he raised. There should be an opportunity for rate variation and there should be initiatives. As the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, said, there is no doubt that town centres can fight back, with easier parking or park and ride, clearer and better security, niche marketing and quality marketing, pedestrianisation and good signage and street furniture. All together, they can make a town make a good offer. Where the Bill is right is in saying that market forces alone will not provide the answer. The noble Lord, Lord Cope, said that the market will deal with the problem because, if businesses are failing, rents and rateable value will go down. In the town where I live, St Albans, we have recently lost from the town centre an excellent toyshop, an excellent art materials shop and an excellent bookshop. However, we have gained three bookmakers in the High Street. Sometimes it is not simply a matter of rents being forced down; the fact is that others come in who may not necessarily add to the total offer of a town centre. As travel writers often bemoan, one problem with our high streets now is that you can close your eyes and without looking you can say which hamburger chain, building society and bookmaker will be there. That distorts the noble Lord’s market.