Future of Town Centres and High Streets

I, too, pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton (Mr Jones) for securing the debate and ensuring that the Backbench Business Committee listened to his remarks. The depth of the conversation that has taken place today has clearly indicated the leadership that he demonstrated. Before I go any further, may I declare an interest? I still have shares in a company that I set up some five or six years ago, which deals in giving advice to property developers on how to manage public consultation and on ensuring that they get their political messages across. I suspect that in the next five minutes I will demonise myself as being responsible for an awful lot of the problems that have occurred. Some of the people with whom I ended up working were from supermarkets and food retailers, so I have some understanding of what they do. First, I wish to talk about Plymouth, which is the largest urban conurbation west of Bristol. It is a low-skilled and low-wage economy, and as Members know it is the home—or I should say a home—of the Royal Navy. My constituency runs south of the A38 and from the River Plym to the River Tamar. It has a city centre in it, and I am uniquely a very strong urban Tory. I therefore hope that I can talk about the impact of what is happening. We were badly bombed during the war, and a lot of the property in the constituency is now beginning to look a little shabby and needs work doing to it. However, we do have a university, which is a key part of ensuring that regeneration takes place. I would be grateful if the university considered how it could include some retail activity on its premises, because there are major implications for the city in July and August when the university has gone down. There is a proposal by English Heritage to list the city centre, which I do not think is a very clever thing to do. All that will do is put the whole thing into aspic and discourage the growth of the retail sector.