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Andy Burnham says he wants to breathe new life back into Britain’s high streets. He is right to make it a priority. The obvious decline of town centres across the country is sad to see. Pubs have closed, thousands of local shops have disappeared and too many high streets have become a depressing mix of empty units and businesses that add little to the communities around them. The government is now promising action. Pubs are getting support, while councils are set to get greater powers to prevent the proliferation of businesses such as vape and betting shops.

All of this is welcome. But there is a glaring omission. What about the restaurants, cafés, takeaways and other independent hospitality businesses that local people want to see thriving on their high streets? Labour has recognised the pressures facing pubs. But walk next door to an independent café or restaurant and the pressures on those businesses are exactly the same.

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Wages have risen. Food and energy remain expensive. Business rates are a burden. Margins are tight and then there is tax. Most food bought from a supermarket is zero-rated for VAT. Sit down and eat a meal in a restaurant and it generally attracts VAT at 20%. Buy hot takeaway food, including fish and chips, and the same rate will usually apply. The UK's 20% VAT rate on hospitality is among the highest in Europe. Restaurant food is taxed at around 10% in France, Spain and Italy, while Germany cut its rate on restaurant food to just 7% at the start of this year.

A meal in a local restaurant isn't necessarily an extravagance. Neither is meeting a friend for a coffee or picking up fish and chips for the family on a Friday night. These are everyday activities. And the businesses providing them are often small, independent operations employing local people and putting money back into their communities.

At BusinessesForSale.com, we have a particularly interesting window into this part of the economy because we deal every day with people buying and selling businesses. Right now, there are more than 1,200 pubs and close to 500 fish and chip shops for sale on our platform, alongside thousands of restaurants, cafés and other hospitality businesses.

That doesn't mean every owner selling is in difficulty – far from it. People sell businesses for all sorts of reasons. But through the owners, buyers and brokers who use our platform, we see just how difficult the economics of running these businesses have become. And that matters far beyond hospitality.

If we want vibrant high streets, we need people prepared to take a risk on them. Someone has to be willing to invest their savings, take on a lease, employ staff and open the doors every morning. We should be making that proposition more attractive, not less.

Our new Prime Minister has said he is in "listening mode" as he develops a ten-year plan to bring hope back to communities. If that listening exercise is serious, hospitality VAT needs to be part of the conversation. Other costs need to be considered too: business rates, employment costs and whether we offer sufficient incentives to people prepared to put their own money into starting or buying independent businesses.

Popular interventions that generate headlines should not be mistaken for a genuine strategy aimed at breathing new life back into our high streets. Helping pubs is popular. Giving councils greater powers over vape and betting shops sends a clear message about the kind of high streets we want. But stopping unwanted businesses opening is only half the job. We also need to make it economically viable for the businesses we do want to open, to survive and grow.

A thriving high street needs pubs, certainly. But it also needs cafés where people meet, restaurants that bring people into town centres in the evening and takeaways serving local communities. Yet we continue to tax and regulate them in ways that make running them increasingly difficult.

Britain talks a lot about encouraging entrepreneurship and revitalising local economies. But that ambition has to extend to the people taking very real financial risks to run ordinary businesses in our towns and cities.

The government is right to want to bring hope back to Britain's high streets. But it will take more than saving the pub and stopping the next vape shop opening. If we want thriving high streets, we need to stop making it so difficult for the businesses we want on them to survive.