A senior Conservative MP is claiming that UK high streets are becoming dominated by charity shops and likens their presence to those of “vape shops”.

During a House of Commons debate on government support for British high streets, Shadow Secretary of State for Business and Trade Andrew Griffith said he wanted to see more “diverse” retailers rather than those selling vaping products or run by charities.

“We want our high streets full of lively, independent, diverse shops catering to the needs of local people, not merely those catering to the lowest common denominator —vape shops—or, meritorious though they are, charity shops in perhaps too great an abundance,” he told MPs.

His comments have been criticised by the Charity Retail Association’s chief executive Robin Osterley for displaying “a very old fashioned and outdated view of charity shops, which in many cases really are providing the vibrancy and creativity he is looking for in the high street”.

Osterley added: “It doesn't feel like he has set foot in a charity shop for a while. Indeed, there are many high streets out there whose footfall and attractiveness is very closely related to their charity retail offer.

“Far from dragging the high street down as he suggests they are actually meeting the needs of their communities much more effectively than many of their commercial counterparts.

“People who are interested in sustainability, who don’t have the money to shop in elitist and expensive independent shops, and people who want to give something back to their communities rather than to contribute to some hedge fund in London, will often much prefer to do their shopping in charity shops, and have the huge benefit of knowing that they are contributing to good causes by so doing.”

Charity shop closures

Griffith’s comments come as two major charity retailers look to close hundreds of their stores across the UK.

This month the British Heart Foundation announced plans to close 150 of its 640 charity shops over the next two years amid concerns around rising costs.

Last year Cancer Research UK announced it is to close 190 stores by April 2027. The charity’s decision was noted during the parliamentary debate by the DUP’s MP for Strangford Jim Shannon.

The Government’s business and trade minister Blair McDougall said the government has already started taking “significant action” to improve town centres, citing its high streets innovation partnerships, a £301m package of funding to “help local areas to reinvent and reimagine high streets, to make them more attractive places to live and put more services into them”.

He added: “We must also place high streets in the wider economic context. They are not only the engines of very local economies but a barometer for how the wider economy feels”.

“We have to recognise that the reason why so many of our town and city centres sometimes feel so down at heel is that before we lost the shops on those high streets, we lost the industry at the edges of towns.”

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