LABOUR PARTY CONFERENCE: Rebuilding the high street means a fundamental change in how we attract investment and jobs into the entire community to rebuild spending power in towns.
“This agenda is bigger than just thinking about parking charges or quick-fix solutions,” said Lisa Nandy, MP for Wigan.“You have got to get those well-paid jobs back into communities, where they belong.”
Nandy was speaking at a Labour conference fringe event aimed at saving the UK’s high streets.
“As towns have aged and cities have got younger, we have lost the working-age population and the spending power, so the high-streets have become unsustainable… we cannot sustain them without well-paid jobs.”
Alongside practical solutions for protecting town centres, Nandy wants devolved powers to be moved back to the towns themselves.
“They have more ambition than we have had nationally for them. All these decisions are made hundreds of miles away. If you want to change things, you have to move power close to home… So you are building communities from the ground up.”
Labour wants a proper “industrial strategy for retail”, which will be developed in partnership with government, businesses and unions, reworking commercial rents and business rates but also focusing on employment and training.
“This is existential for us,” said Nandy. “In recent years we came to believe our purpose was about redistribution of wealth, but actually we are always about the fight for power and for equality in its broadest form.”
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