I thank the hon. Member for securing the debate. On the issue of pride in local market towns, in my area there is a small market town called Limavady.

Over 100 years ago, a family called Massey emigrated from there to New Zealand, and their son became the Prime Minister of New Zealand before, during and after the first world war, playing a key role in the Commonwealth’s response to that war.

In a few weeks’ time we mark the centenary of his death. Such things need to be marked in small market towns so that they are not forgotten, and people can take pride in what their forebears achieved in the past.

I agree. That is one of the reasons we are all here: we are talking about the unique offer and appeal of our communities. All and any history regarding families and individuals who have helped to shape, and shown commitment to, our communities should be cherished and showcased.

I see how that example shows the uniqueness of the hon. Member’s own community. The key to the development and maintenance of successful place management is governance structures that support effective decision making and give a voice to the variety of stakeholders that engage in places.

This is particularly important for many market towns, where proactive engagement is required to stimulate renewal. That is why I am excited about the devolution White Paper and the strengthening of business improvement districts.

However, those districts are not active in all areas; therefore, in some places this function could be provided through the development of community improvement districts. That would provide a structure through which community views can be heard and used to shape decision making.

Fourthly, while I cannot thank the Department and the Government enough for their capital funding projects, such as Southchurch Hall in Southend and the Maritime museum in Liverpool, I would like to work on a strategy that encourages small and medium-sized enterprises to invest in skills and developers of assets to create investable propositions that involve repairs.

A targeted approach to capital investment for heritage and culture would achieve better outcomes by allowing the growth of skills and the supply chains required to deliver the maintenance and repair of historic buildings and places over the long term, improving the quality of delivered schemes, dampening inflationary pressures and ensuring that the recipients of funding—especially local government—are investment ready.

They know where, when and how to make best use of the funding for the benefit of the communities they serve. I could talk for quite some time but I am sure hon. Members are keen for me to shut up.

No.

Speak for yourself!

Oh, guys. I am more excited to hear the thoughts of other Members present, because I know that they bring insights into their communities from which we can all benefit.

Order. I thank the hon. Member for introducing the debate. I remind all Back-Bench Members that if they want to contribute, they should keep bobbing so I know. I am afraid insights will have to be limited to about two and a half minutes if we are to get everyone in.

Thank you for calling me, Sir Jeremy. The points I want to make will probably cover all the market towns with important heritage in my constituency of Wetherby and Easingwold. I will give just a couple of examples, but what I say will be relevant to them all.

Let me begin with Boroughbridge, a traditional market town. There is an ecosystem to market towns, which are the subject of the debate; I congratulate the hon. Member for Southend East and Rochford (Mr Alaba) on securing it.

In the countryside, farmers’ markets and the whole ecosystem of the trade that takes place is reliant on farming communities, which the towns often grew from. The blunt truth is that there is growing concern about the effect on small family farms, which contribute directly to market towns.

A lot of the produce on sale in them comes from an ecosystem that covers the entire rural economy. There is a real concern that goes beyond what we have been talking about. Food supply and the farm inheritance tax can directly impact those areas. The hon.

Member for Southend East and Rochford outlined the investment that is needed in market towns, and there are things that we can do. Wetherby in my constituency has a lot of important cultural buildings. Such towns are full of buildings that have been there for centuries.

There is no way that they will reach the C grade on an energy performance certificate. That policy, brought in by the last Government, needs to be reviewed because when businesses leave, their premises will not be re-rented unless they meet performance C.

That is a real problem because it is almost impossible to get that performance certificate.

A range of policies, whether it is taxation on farms, which contribute directly to the ecosystem of local communities, or net zero contributions that make premises impossible to rehire, will have the effect of hollowing out vital parts of the community. All those issues need to be addressed.

I am grateful for the exemplary time discipline so far.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Southend East and Rochford (Mr Alaba) on securing this debate. It is always a pleasure to speak about Strangford.

We have constituency heritage across this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and our culture, while sometimes different, is worth celebrating. Northern Ireland is rich in cultural heritage, and there is a list of market towns across my borough.

In Strangford, I have Newtownards, Comber and Ballynahinch. These towns have historically hosted markets and continue to do so today. Newtownards market is run every Saturday by shop owner Clive O’Neill.

The town of Comber hosts mini-markets, most notably Comber farmers’ market and the Comber earlies, which celebrates the town’s agricultural history. Comber is famous for the Comber spud, which we all know.

Indeed, we are probably in awe of it, because it is definitely the best potato in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, if not further afield. I am fortunate to have had a constituency office in Newtownards for some 26 years.

I celebrate, respect and love the culture of my town, and all its unique historical attributes. Newtownards came into being in 1613 under James I. The town has much older roots, having been developed on the site of an older settlement.

Its location on the Ards peninsula, where I live, means that it has always played a key role in growth, trade, agriculture and fishing.

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that market towns are a crucial part of our culture, not only here in England but in Northern Ireland, too. In my constituency, King John granted Bingley’s first market charter back in 1212 and the Bingley butter cross still stands to this day. Does the hon.

Gentleman agree that thriving market towns are as vital to the future of our economy as they were to the past?

In the spirit of working together, I will call the Front Benchers at 10.28 am. There are still eight people who want to speak, so I am afraid speeches will have to be less than two minutes or someone will be disappointed.

It is an honour to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Jeremy. I am grateful to the hon.

Member for Southend East and Rochford (Mr Alaba), not least because I represent six market towns in my constituency—Honiton, Axminster, Ottery St Mary, Sidmouth, Seaton and Cullompton; I will probably have about 20 seconds for each of them.

To draw the strings together, I will say that our heritage affects us not just locally but nationally. I will give an example. In 2022, Mr Speaker visited Honiton’s Allhallows Museum, where he told us how he would be proud to wear the jabot and cuffs made by Honiton lacemakers in times gone by.

He visited Patricia Perryman, who made the jabot and cuffs out of Honiton lace. He told us that he would be using them in the future, and so it was. For the King’s coronation, people in east Devon were proud to see Mr Speaker wearing those items.

I cannot do justice to those amazing market towns in the time available to me.

Members will, I am sure, have heard of Axminster Carpets; of Ottery St Mary’s tar barrels festival; of the fashionable seaside resort of Sidmouth and its folk festival; of Seaton, once a coastal trading hub, which today has a tramway in place of a railway; and of Cullompton, with its wool heritage and absent railway station.

We really need to reinstall the station to reinvigorate the town and bring back some of our more recent cultural heritage. To summarise, these market towns tell a story of a resilient, creative and proud community.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Jeremy. I have 10 market towns in my constituency, but—do not panic—I am not going to talk about them all. They include Caerfyrddin, which is the oldest town in Wales and has the amphitheatre to prove it.

Honestly, though, people there are still struggling to recover after covid. A few years ago, the council decided to inject around £100,000 into each of those towns, and each town brought forward plans.

Some wanted better parking and some wanted improved leisure facilities for their youngsters, but all chose exactly what they wanted and how they wanted to move their towns forward. With shared prosperity fund money and other available grants, it had a threefold multiplier.

That allowed Llandovery, for example, to improve its tourism offer, Llandeilo to build a BMX park for its youngsters, and Newcastle Emlyn to reopen the old amphitheatre to stage open-air concerts.

On top of that, money from the SPF pot has been allocated to refurbishing shop fronts—many businesses have utilised that—and to creating smart towns, a concept that can help businesses to attract footfall. I want to talk about footfall, because car parking remains an issue for many of our towns.

Laugharne and Whitland, for example, want more space, but paying for parking is also an issue. No councils can afford to pay for free parking while paying business rates on those car parks—that cannot be the answer.

If the Government are serious about revitalising our cultural and historic market towns, they need to abolish the business rates on our car parks. Not one council across the UK can support free parking while paying millions to the Government in business rates.

Free parking would help our town centres, as it helps in the retail parks that have been placed all around our town centres. The Government have a choice: either they abolish the rates payable to our local authorities or they continue to allow our town centres to deteriorate.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Jeremy. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Southend East and Rochford (Mr Alaba) on securing this important debate.

I represent the town of Rugby, which has perhaps the ultimate origin story in a sport that carries our name across the globe, but our great town is about much more than the sport. I will take a little canter around it, as I did when I joined Ken on the volunteer-run walking tour of Rugby.

Rugby has so much to offer. To take the music scene, for example, we have the Rococo players, the Bilton brass band, Boldfest in Newbold, Rugbylele—our own ukulele band—as well as great bands such as Courthouse, singer-songwriter Jessie May and much more.

In the arts sector, we have Art at the Alex, a former pub, which is now a community-run arts organisation.

We also have a wonderful art gallery and museum that currently has a fantastic exhibition from the Ingram Collection, and also runs a superb exhibition on a history of Rugby in 50 objects—I thoroughly recommend it to anyone who wants to come and have a look.

Rugby has a wonderful literary heritage, including being the birthplace of Rupert Brooke. It has a fantastic, vibrant sports sector, and Rugby borough women’s football team narrowly lost, unfortunately, to Liverpool in the FA cup recently.

It has a wonderful industrial heritage, with British Thomson-Houston and Willans Works factories covering aviation, maritime and automotive. The inventor of helium was born in Rugby, holography was invented there, and Sir Frank Whittle first tested the jet engine in Rugby.

We had the incredible radio masts at Hillmorton. Today, GE Vernova provides high-tech jobs. This debate is about the future.

There is such huge potential in small market towns that needs to be unleashed, so I wonder whether the Minister might consider a campaign to encourage people to visit small market towns such as Rugby.

If we go to the VisitBritain website, we see a lot about cities, but we do not see much about towns. All too often, smaller towns are forgotten by officialdom—they are not forgotten by politicians, as everyone can see from this debate, but they are often forgotten by officialdom.

We must invest in our small towns, our people and the potential. Cultural heritage is about the past, the present and, most importantly, the future.

If she can limit herself to one minute, I call Catherine Fookes.

I thank all colleagues for their brevity. We now move to the Front Benchers.

In our market square in Bingley, we have Bingley arts centre and, next to it, Bingley town hall, which is ripe for redevelopment. The community would love to make it into a creative arts centre. Will my hon.

Friend ensure that I and members of the local community can meet the relevant Minister to see what opportunities there are to access the huge amount of funding that Ministers have announced for arts and culture?

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s contribution. I drove through her constituency at the weekend. It is a beautiful part of the world, and I am very happy to offer a meeting with my hon. Friend the Minister for Creative Industries, Arts and Tourism.

Through the heritage at risk capital fund and the heritage revival fund, we are making an extra £20 million of investment available to the sector, to repair our most at-risk heritage sites and support groups who are ready to bring derelict old buildings back into good use.

The heritage at risk capital fund will account for £15 million from this spring, and it lives up to its name: it is all about providing grants for repairs and conservation for heritage buildings at risk, with a particular focus on those sites that need it most.

It could help all sorts of different types of heritage—shops, pubs, parks and town halls.

I know the Minister’s Yorkshire constituency very well. There are many great old buildings, but one problem will be getting their energy performance certificates to band C. It is all very well investing the capital so that they can be reused, but if they are not meeting band C, they cannot be used.

Will she take back to the Minister for Creative Industries, Arts and Tourism the point that this area needs to be reviewed, because I think the policy of the last Government was a mistake?

To summarise our debate, it is fair to say that market towns are up against it and often feel the sharp end of economic downturns.

I know at first hand how local communities’ involvement in decision making creates thriving economies all year round and a long-term sustainable protection for cultural heritage.

By harnessing the unique character of cultural heritage in our market towns, we can help to achieve local growth across the country, with all the benefits that come with that. I thank all hon. Members who have taken part in the debate and thank the Minister for her response.

Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered the cultural heritage of market towns.