Criminal vape shops are laughing at the law - but Burnham's high street plans will hurt honest traders like me

Here is a chance to show what that means, and it starts with something only he can truly push through: shutting the shops that sell illicit trade and shutting them for good.

All over the country, the high street is being hollowed out. Some of that is online shopping and rising costs but something much worse is going on, and it now lands on the new Prime Minister's desk: a black-market trade thriving in plain sight.

Walk down almost any row of shops and you will spot it, and those of us behind a till see it clearer than anyone. Fake cigarettes sold under the counter. Illegal vapes lined up by the till, untaxed, unchecked and aimed squarely at kids. Shops that never seem to sell a thing yet never seem to shut. This is not harmless. It undercuts honest shopkeepers like me and puts money in the pockets of organised crime.

We are not short of laws. But the worst offenders treat the ones we have as just another bill to pay. A shop gets raided. The illegal stock is taken away. A small fine turns up. A few days later the shutters are back up, often with a new name over the door and the same trade underneath. Enforcement officers know these places inside out, yet they watch them reopen again and again.

There is a current government consultation off the back of the Tobacco and Vapes Act, but it seems more concerned with making life harder for reputable and decent retailers than with how we get to grips with illicit trade.

So, if Mr Burnham wants a message every high street would understand, it is this: the shutters coming down and staying down. Not a temporary order that runs out in a few weeks, not a fine that comes out of next month's takings, but the door locked, the lease gone, the trade over. This is the one thing the worst traders are actually scared of, because they cannot pay their way out of it.

The good news is the tools are already there. He just needs to sharpen them. The closure powers councils, the police and Trading Standards already hold are too often temporary, slow and expensive to get, and they go after the person rather than the shop. The worst traders play exactly that game, closing one company and opening another at the same address the next week. Powers that hit the premises itself, that can be granted quickly, and that can be made permanent for repeat offenders would flip the whole thing on its head.

It would bring the landlords on side too. A shop that could be shut for good is a shop no decent landlord wants on their books, and that risk would dry these places up faster than any fine.

There is a sensible way to pay for it, as well. Fines and money from seized stock could be handed straight back to the teams doing the closing. Going hard at the handful of shops behind most of the trouble would make the money we have go a lot further.

None of it works without backbone and we should never forget the people at the sharp end. Shop workers like me cop the abuse, the threats and sometimes the violence when we challenge a shoplifter or refuse a sale. We deserve a government that has our back, not one that shrugs.

The Prime Minister says he wants to be judged on what he delivers. Shut the dodgy shops for good, back the people enforcing the law, and hand our streets back to honest traders, and he will find plenty of support from shopkeepers like me. If he does not, he can expect us to keep on at him.

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Paul Cheema is the Director of Malcolm's Stores Costcutter and co-founder of C-talk.

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