Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts
Main Page: Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Conservative - Life peer)Localism Bill
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts Excerpts
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts
My Lords, I listened very carefully to what my noble friend said in her introductory remarks to this set of amendments. I do not think that she has shot my fox but she has probably hit it. Nevertheless, I should like to press on. I think that what she was saying—and she is sympathetic to not interfering with commercial transactions—is at the root of what I am seeking to achieve with this amendment. At the same time, the amendment addresses some of the issues raised this morning by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, in our Clause 74 stand part debate, as well as the issues that have arisen in prior debates on the difference between a service and a piece of property and on how a “going concern” works in relation to assets of community value.
Amendment 143 is an introductory amendment that seeks to add a further requirement where the moratorium takes effect. That relates to Condition D in my Amendment 144, which would permit disposals unless,
“the business is at risk of closure … the business is closed … the business is subject to an application for change of use”,
or,
“the building is subject to a demolition order”—
the sorts of issues that came up in our earlier debates. In other words, where the business is at risk, the community has some reason to interfere. However, where there is a going concern and the service will continue to be provided or the business will continue, it is not clear why there needs to be any interference with normal commercial development and commercial enterprise. That takes us back to the balance between the right to enjoy one’s private property and the rights of those in the locality. Of course, this will apply to pubs probably more—I shall say a few words about that in a minute—but it will also apply to anywhere where an entry fee is charged and anywhere run as a commercial enterprise. It will include farm shops, rural zoos, gardens and parks. Therefore, it is important, in that it could cover a wide range of commercial assets that are owned by individuals.
On the specifics of the pub trade, pubs are sold in blocks and there can be between three or four or 200 or 300 in a single block. Why is that? It is nothing very unusual or surprising. It is perhaps because an individual has run a pub successfully and would like to buy two or three more and wishes to do so in a particular area because geographical proximity improves managerial control. It may be that a specific pub operator is overrepresented in one geographical area and underrepresented in another and, therefore, both wish to rebalance their portfolios.
Then there is the question of different companies viewing different sectors of the pub trade as offering particularly attractive opportunities. Those noble Lords who read the Financial Times will have seen in today's copy a long article on the decline of what is known as the wet-led trade; that is what is called the spit-and-sawdust boozers, where there is just drink and not much of a food offering. Beside those sorts of pubs, which have been under considerable strain, there are obviously town bars, village pubs, housing estate pubs and trunk-road pubs, with hotels attached such as Travelodge and Premier Inn, which do not provide food, so the pub does. Increasingly now, there are also retail park pubs.
I would argue that, provided that the pub, business or service is to continue, there is no need for the community to be involved. If it is going to be closed and it falls into one of the categories that I have listed in my Amendment 144 then there would need to be a locus for the community and I could understand why the community might wish to get involved. I would say caveat emptor—pub companies do not close pubs that are very successful, they close them because they are failing. It is not an idyll, rural or urban. In this country 30,000 of the 60,000 pubs are individually owned. They are free houses, and there are 30,000 small businesses struggling to make a living.
Perhaps I may be permitted a brief rant. Governments of all persuasions talk about the importance of the pub trade as a centre where community activity can be developed and a community feeling can be expressed. That is all very well until you come to the legislation, which continually hammers pub operators, big and small, with legislative procedures and processes. You have only to look at the amendments that we shall be discussing on the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill to see how many of those will land quite heavily on small pubs and small pub operators.
There are the competitive pressures. The fact is that, so far, nothing has been done about supermarket pricing. On their way home tonight noble Lords can buy a pint of lager in their local supermarket for 60p a pint, but they will have to pay £2.80 in their local pub. In the supermarket it is sold at or below cost—probably below cost— before a bank holiday weekend.
Inevitably young people will buy a slab—as they call it—in the supermarket and sit in the village square or the street drinking the cans, which they may then drop on the ground while vaguely insulting the passers-by; and at about 8.30 pm they will go into the pub to watch the football and have a couple more pints. They may then be sick outside the pub, and the pub will get blamed for the disorder caused.
There is a lot in this trade which is not as easy as it looks. There are the societal pressures of people staying home, as well as the rapid societal and economic changes in our towns. A simple example is that 15 years ago, the company with which I am involved had 20 pubs in Kidderminster, the home of the UK carpet trade, and today there are three. The carpet trade has gone, so the pubs have gone. The rapid changes in our society have left pubs of all types and sizes beached.
The noble Lord, Lord Cameron, referred to the Pub is the Hub scheme. It is an excellent idea and a brilliant concept. However, its case studies emphasise very strongly the need, for example, for obtaining sound professional advice on running a pub as soon as possible, and include comments to the effect that running a pub is more complex than was anticipated, no one should underestimate what is involved in running a successful pub, running a pub via a committee is challenging, and so on. While we talk about the need, even where a pub has closed, to safeguard the rights of the community—I quite understand that—it is important that people are realistic about what can be achieved with these assets. They have not got into the state they are in merely because they have been neglected, but most often because they are in a declining or difficult section of the trade or of their particular geographical location.
That is the end of my rant. The purpose of the amendment is to urge the Government to consider carefully the exclusion from the provisions of arm's-length commercial transactions. If there is going to be a change of the sort listed in my amendment—a closure or a change of use—of course the community should get involved: it has every right to. Otherwise, we are in danger of impeding normal commercial transactions of varying sorts concerning various sorts of assets, which cannot be in the interests of the vibrancy of our local communities. I beg to move.
Lord Cotter
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 143ZA. There is an overall concern that the Bill is sometimes aimed at property rather than at the services provided. Surely it is vital for our local communities that there is a good provision for local needs. It is fair to say that in this country—many noble Lords have spoken about this—too often, for various reasons, local shops and services have been lost. I cast my mind back—I thought it was 10 years ago, I have now written “20 years” but actually it was 25 years ago—to when I was a councillor. I thought it was not that long ago. Supported by local people, I managed to get our local council to realise that a local parade of shops was at risk of being turned into a parade of building societies and offices. Fortunately, we were successful in getting the matter addressed at that time.
Under the Bill, if a business intends to sell, say, a community shop as a community shop, that will be welcome, and would be welcomed by local people. The amendment inserts,
“unless the relevant disposal will be the sale of the land privately to another business for the same use as when it was listed as an asset of community value”.
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, we keep coming back to the same issue. I take the point that we probably need to look at the narrowing of the classification but by doing that we will still have to look at what would not be caught, which is what these amendments address. I heard the rant by my noble friend Lord Hodgson and I do not suppose for a moment that he expects me to say anything other than that we have heard what he said. I will deal with all the points raised but I should like to say from the outset that we are quite sympathetic to looking at this again.
On the government amendments, I have already said that we are sympathetic to the intention of Amendment 144A. We understand the concerns of some rural landowners who are already making their land available for periodic community use. It is certainly not our intention to discourage them from doing so. Where a listed asset forms part of a larger piece of land, we recognise that to delay the sale of the whole estate would in most cases be completely disproportionate. I am happy to confirm for the noble Lord that we will have a look at this, which complies with my previous commitment.
As set out in our consultation document, which I am sure everyone has read from cover to cover, we intend to exempt a range of different types of disposals that do not impinge on the intended aim of a policy. We have already indicated our intention to exempt disposals of land due to inheritance and gifts, and transfers between family members, in light of responsible consultations. I think that that encompassed everything put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner. But in hoping that we have a little time before the Recess and Report stage to discuss these issues, I am happy to say that we will reconsider or consider those with him and other noble Lords concerned.
Amendments 143, 143ZA and 144 would exempt the disposal of business-to-business transactions where there was no risk to the continuation of the business. Earlier, I mentioned that we understood that the use of a power might stay as the use of a power but if it was sold between two companies we would not expect that to be caught up in the community asset ability to buy.
However, we are slightly afraid that the amendments could have some unintended consequences and would create more confusion than clarity, which a number of noble Lords seem to think this is anyway. We are not sure what the terms “risk of closure” and “business” mean. We are prepared to look at these again and discuss them with noble Lords to see whether we can avoid any further unintended consequences that would impact on the aim of the policy. I hope that the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for those answers and for her sympathetic ear to these probing amendments. Amendment 144 is focused on business-to-business transactions. I entirely accept that the phrase “risk of closure” would not commit itself to parliamentary draftsmen but I have never known any Back-Bench Members who have ever committed themselves to parliamentary draftsmen because they always want to take it away and tidy it up. As regards the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, the time to act is before the closure takes place but, once the closure has happened the business, or service, may well be doomed or its risk of failure much increased.
I am grateful to my noble friend for her positive response and look forward to returning to this matter later when we have some further thinking from the Government. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts
My Lords, my Amendments 146 and 147 in this group have been slightly overtaken by the paper that my noble friend has put in the Library, by her opening remarks today and, indeed, by the remarks of other noble Lords during the preceding debate. I am aware that the timescales for the moratorium are controversial, and I quite understand the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, about the difficulty of getting together local initiatives and getting them to the financing stage.
The simple purpose of Amendment 146 is to encourage the Government to put on the face of the Bill the moratorium periods for the interim window of opportunity, the full window of opportunity and the protected period. As a result, Amendment 147 would remove from the Bill the power to change this by regulation. I seek to do that really for the reasons given by my noble friend Lord Howard of Rising. I think that this issue is sufficiently important and goes sufficiently deep into our culture and into the structure of our society that these periods should not be able to be altered by means of a statutory instrument, which I think Members on all sides of the House would agree do not get quite the scrutiny that they often deserve, in the sense that voting down a statutory instrument is always a nuclear deterrent and so is a very rare thing indeed.
As a matter of principle, there is a strong reason for having the time periods on the face of the Bill, although I am less concerned about what those time periods are. As my noble friend Lord Howard has said, most communities will know that something is happening and, therefore, they will not start de novo from the day that a decision is announced; they will know that the particular service or shop or whatever is in trouble and, therefore, will be able to begin to get their act together. However, there is clearly a difficulty or problem or issue with timing, to which the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, referred. I am just concerned that we have clarity about the timings on the face of the Bill, which should not be capable of being altered for better or for worse—for longer or for shorter—by a future Government.
Lord Patel of Bradford
My Lords, I will speak briefly in support of Amendments 143A and 147A.
As noble Lords have heard, the first of these amendments concerns the conditions by which an owner of a listed community asset can dispose of that asset. For example, Amendment 143A would ensure that,
“where the owner is a public body, any relevant community interest group or groups … have been provided with the option of first refusal”.
This additional protection would make sure that the priorities of local communities come above those of the landowner. That has to be a good principle to support in a Bill that seeks to make local communities the prime driver in considerations about the use, sale and disposal of community assets. I shall not repeat the arguments already succinctly made by my noble friend Lady Thornton, but I hope that the Minister will give this matter serious consideration.
Amendment 147A is different from the others in this group, but they are all concerned with the appropriate time that any moratorium should be in place. Amendment 147A would ensure that the prescribed period for any full moratorium should not be less than six months. This is another important protection, especially for community and voluntary groups, which may need more time to respond to any bid and to take advantage of the provision for community assets in the Bill, as the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, said.
However, I understand the concern raised by the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Howard; that is, that the prescribed period should not be more than six months as it is reasonable for there to be some time limit to the process. At the same time, I believe that the specification of a minimum time is equally important and I hope that the Minster will accept it.