Skip to main content
CommunityEconomyJobsNationalNews and viewsParliamentPortsmouth

City MP welcomes vision to reverse ten years of city centre decline under the Conservatives

By 23 March 2021No Comments

Labour has set out a “bright future for Britain’s high streets” and launched a five-point plan to “put communities first” in support of our community’s high streets.

The party’s plan, set out by the Shadow Chancellor includes:

  1. Stopping the Conservatives selling off Britain’s high streets for low-quality housing, by scrapping new planning rules.
  2. Empowering councils to fill empty shops with new businesses to breathe life into town centres.
  3. Challenging the government to use Tax Day on 23 March to level the tax playing field for high street businesses and online firms.
  4. Establishing a High Streets Fightback Fund to help businesses hit hard by the pandemic get back on their feet.
  5. Protecting family finances by reversing Rishi Sunak’s economically illiterate hammer blows to people’s pockets.

Stephen Morgan MP, Member of Parliament for Portsmouth South, said:

“I’ve long argued that the Government must do more, and our council do better, in tackling the decline of our city’s high streets.

That is why I have been pushing Ministers to invest in Portsmouth and pleased to have helped secure funding for the future of high streets as our city recovers from this pandemic. But in order to reverse the decline we see in Portsmouth’s shopping areas we must put communities first.

The Conservatives have completely failed to protect Britain’s high streets over the last decade with over 7,000 shops closed across the country on their watch.

I welcome this five-point plan to deliver a bright future for our high streets. We need urgent action to reverse a decade of decline in our shopping centres, and I know constituents will know how vital this now is”.

Arguing that high street businesses are competing with online retailers with “one hand tied behind their backs”, Shadow Chancellor Anneliese Dodds, MP, has demanded urgent action to level the playing field:

“We can’t continue with a situation where five US tech firms account for £1.3bn in lost corporation tax every year, while high street shops pay business rates under a system that hasn’t been reformed for years.

“The Government should set out what it plans to do about this. On so-called ‘Tax Day’, the Conservatives must level the playing field between high street businesses and giant online firms.”