Totally. Out-of-town shopping centres have a duty to the town that they are outside, and with which they are often not engaged.
I understand that, during the pre-Budget negotiations, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills thought it reasonable to investigate whether something might be done about retail business rates, but that the difficulty is how to advantage the people we want to be given an advantage—the small shopkeepers—not the big players, some of whom need no financial support whatever. I could refer again to Tesco.
Where we want to do something about business rates, that is currently more complex than it need be, which I want the Minister to investigate. I have heard reports from small business sources that when they want a downward valuation of their business rates and have a serious case—and when business rates are out of kilter with rents, as the hon. Member for Rochdale suggested—it takes far too long to get a result. By the time that it has all been sorted out, they will be out of business.
My fundamental point is that retailers must adjust to the shock of the new. They need to see their shops not as antagonistic to the internet, but must play along with it and be portals for it, because they have certain
advantages. The current system, with white vans constantly going up and down the country and leaving brown parcels in the porches of people who are out, is not frightfully efficient. There is no capacity within internet marketing or sales for much to be done about repair or return, at least not without additional expense. Very little quality control can be exercised when people deal with an internet retailer, as opposed to one whose shop they can walk into to complain about the product. The interesting point—this is why I think that the hon. Gentleman is really on to something—is that some big stores, such as John Lewis, which have used the internet very well, have found that that has not corrupted or reduced their in-store sales, but has enhanced and developed them, so antagonism need not exist.
In conclusion, there is a need for the retail sector and the high streets of this country to pull themselves up by their own boot straps. There is significant help that the Government can get, and I am sure that there will be lots more sensible suggestions.