Lord Snape
Main Page: Lord Snape (Labour - Life peer)Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill
Lord Snape Excerpts
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Baroness Neville-Rolfe) (Con)
My Lords, I start by saying that I am delighted to see my noble friend Lady Harding of Winscombe and am much looking forward to her maiden speech.
Over 200 years ago, Napoleon said that the British were a nation of shopkeepers. He was nearly right. If he had expanded his vision slightly and said that Britain was a land of small businesses he would have been spot on. Small businesses have always been the lifeblood of our economy—and recently there has been some good news. At the start of 2014, there were a record 5.2 million small businesses in the UK, 7% more than at the start of 2013, representing the largest annual increase in the business population since the business population estimates began in 2000.
The coalition Government have led the way in their support for small business. Among the measures taken are the cut in corporation tax from 28% to 20% by 2015, the doubling of business rate relief for small firms and the doubling of the annual investment allowance. But we recognise that it is not sufficient just to offer help. People also need to be able to discover easily what help is available. We have therefore streamlined the support though the GREAT business website, giving a single point of access for advice. Similarly, we will bring together schemes for small firms into a single service, so they can access a wide range of support in one place, tailored to their needs.
The Bill before the House builds on the Government’s commitment and is designed to make the UK the best place in the world to start and grow a business. I will briefly tackle the content of this long Bill using five broad themes: making life easier for small business; improving the climate for business; improving company transparency to deliver on our 2013 G7 commitments; encouraging better employment practices; and—to pubs—helping beer drinkers and the publicans who serve them.
On my first theme, helping small businesses, one of the most daunting things for a small business is to start trading as a company. The Government propose to make the whole process easier by streamlining the company registration process, and the Bill requires this to be in place by May 2017. Especially since the economic downturn, another key challenge for businesses starting up or trying to grow is securing the finance that they need. The Bill promotes greater competition in the banking sector by opening up the market to alternative finance providers. Some 71% of small businesses approach only one finance provider when seeking finance. The Bill will require the big banks to share information on small businesses that they reject for finance with online platforms, when the small business would like them to do so. This will help them gain access to alternative finance providers.
Nine out of 10 small businesses still use paper cheques. The Bill will provide for electronic imaging via smartphones and other mobile devices, allowing cheques to be deposited remotely, thereby speeding up the process in the banks, in addition to—not, of course, separate from—more traditional methods. This will dramatically reduce clearing times, from up to six days at present to less than two, increasing convenience and providing net benefits of nearly £94 million a year.
Cash flow is particularly crucial for small businesses and is often the difference between success and failure. It is not right that small and medium-sized businesses are, according to figures published by the Experian payment performance index in July, owed nearly £40 billion in late payments. This affects 60% of UK small businesses, with the average small business waiting for over £38,000 in overdue payments. The Bill introduces measures that will give small businesses more information on what payment practices to expect from their customers. These changes will incentivise larger companies to improve their payment policies and practices. Business representative bodies, including the Federation of Small Businesses and the Confederation of British Industry, have welcomed this work.
We should not forget the public procurement market. It is worth £230 billion and is important to small business. Alongside other measures being brought forward through secondary legislation in the new year that will transpose the new European Union procurement directive into UK law, the Bill will further help small businesses to access public procurement opportunities. The measures will extend across the public sector, including local authorities and the NHS, and make an important change for small business.
My second theme is the business climate. This Government’s regulatory reform agenda has been at the heart of making the UK one of the best places in the world to do business. The World Bank’s Doing Business 2015 report ranked us eighth out of 189 economies—an improvement in our performance of two places on the previous year. Within the European Union we are behind only Denmark. We have reduced the annual cost of domestic regulation by over £1.5 billion since January 2011. For new regulations, our “one in, two out” policy seems at last to have led to something of a culture change in Whitehall. I have known and worked in Whitehall for nearly 40 years, in one form or another. The Bill will strengthen small businesses’ confidence in government by introducing a business impact target to be set at the beginning of each Parliament, which the Government will report transparently on. It will be used for the independent scrutiny of economic impact assessments related to this target.
Where regulation is essential, we know the regulators implementing it do not always enforce it properly; 63% of businesses have, at some point, disagreed with a regulator’s decision, but have never appealed. The Bill provides for small business appeals champions to be established in the non-economic regulators—ranging from the Environment Agency and the Health and Safety Executive to bodies such as the DVLA—to improve the handling of complaints and appeals and, most importantly, to ensure that the process works, particularly for small business. For the financial services sector, the existing independent Complaints Commissioner will be required to report annually on the regulator’s complaint-handling procedures.
There are 2.9 million home businesses in the UK and they are of growing importance to the economy, with an increase of 500,000 in their number since 2010. The Bill will amend the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 to ensure that starting a business from home will not create a business tenancy, thereby encouraging further growth in this thriving sector.
The business community, along with all parents in employment, needs access to good-quality and flexible childcare. The Bill will make it easier for schools and other providers to offer more early education and childcare. The measures will promote a prosperous and growing market to meet the needs of working families.
The UK labour market is also dependent on having a properly skilled workforce to meet its demands. Until now, Governments have not done enough to track a person’s progress through their school life and into the labour market. The Bill will enable the effectiveness of education providers in preparing pupils for employment to be assessed. The additional data we will secure will be invaluable to young people and their parents, and will focus educators on employment outcomes, as well as performance tables.
My third theme is company law. As I have said, the UK is an outstanding place to start and grow a business. However, there is a clear link between illicit financial flows and company structures. Measures in the Bill will therefore help ensure that UK companies are not used to facilitate criminal activity, such as money laundering and tax evasion. The Bill will establish a register of “people with significant control” over each company, increasing transparency around who ultimately owns and controls UK companies. The Bill will abolish bearer shares, directly removing an easy means of facilitating illegal activity. This meets an important G7 commitment. At the same time, we are simplifying the current filing requirements for companies, removing duplication and improving the accuracy and integrity of our public companies register.
Unfortunately, a natural consequence of a competitive market is that sometimes some businesses become insolvent. The Bill makes a number of changes that strengthen and modernise our insolvency regime.
My fourth theme is encouraging better employment practices. Part 11 of the Bill deals with these matters. We should not forget that this Government have secured great achievements in job creation. There are now more than 30 million people in employment, which is a record high. Since 2010, an additional 2.1 million private sector jobs have been created. Within these totals, small businesses employ an estimated 12.1 million people. Therefore, for small businesses to succeed we must ensure that those employed are treated fairly and that businesses playing by the rules are not disadvantaged by those which do not.
The Bill will provide assurances to people who step forward and whistleblow that action will be taken. Last year, a report by the University of Greenwich and Public Concern at Work found that 75% of whistleblowers believe that nothing was done about the wrongdoing they reported. The Bill will require regulators or professional bodies dealing with whistleblowing to publish an annual public report.
The Bill will also improve confidence in the ability of the employment tribunal system to deliver justice by incentivising payment of awards and addressing the current position that there are no significant consequences for non-payment. The Bill will also reduce the delays in the tribunals process caused by frequent postponements, addressing the costs to business that often arise from these delays.
The Government are committed to ensuring that employers are penalised if they fail to pay the national minimum wage to their workers. On 7 March this year we increased the penalty percentage from 50% of total underpayments owed to workers to 100% and the maximum penalty from £5,000 to £20,000. The Bill goes further: it sets the maximum penalty to apply on a per-worker rather than per-notice basis.
Finally on employment, I know that there are strong views in this House on zero-hours contracts. Used correctly, I believe that such contracts support business flexibility and they are often welcomed by those employed on them. Recent research carried out by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development suggests workers on zero-hours contracts are more content than their counterparts in permanent employment. However, we want to make sure that these contracts are not abused and we recognise that exclusivity clauses sometimes included in zero-hours contracts are wrong, as they prevent people seeking work elsewhere. This is not in line with free-market or any other type of economics. I am pleased that the Bill addresses the problem by making such clauses invalid.
Finally, I turn to the subject of pubs. In my immediate family there are five adult males and me. That fact has many important consequences, one of which is that the majority view of the family is very much in favour of pubs. The pub industry makes a significant contribution to the UK economy. It is made up of many small businesses run by hard-working people and employs hundreds of thousands of people. While it is an industry which has suffered due to societal change, it contributes substantially to community spirit and cohesion, and it is one that we want to see grow and flourish.
The Bill will address the imbalance in bargaining power between pub-owning companies and their tied tenants to ensure that the latter are treated fairly and are no worse off than they would be if they were free of tie. For the first time, tied tenants will have a statutory code that they can rely on, based on the industry’s own voluntary code. It will be enforced by an independent adjudicator, who will have real sanctions at his or her disposal.
Noble Lords will be aware that this issue has a long history. Over the course of a decade there have been four Select Committee investigations into unfairness in the relationship between pub-owning businesses and their tenants. The Government have received, and continue to receive, a huge amount of correspondence from tenants about problems in their relationship with their pub-owning business. Research by the Campaign for Real Ale appears to show that 57% of tenants tied to large pub companies earn less than £10,000 per year, compared with just 25% of tenants who are free of tie.
Industry self-regulation has brought a number of improvements, and there is evidence that there is much responsible practice in this industry, yet some tied tenants continue to face unfair treatment and hardship. The Government gave self-regulation ample opportunity to succeed but the truth is that it has not delivered.
Noble Lords will know that there was much lively debate on this subject in the other place. Members there voted against the Government to include in the Bill a market rent only option. This provision requires large pub-owning companies to offer their tied tenants the right to go free of tie in certain circumstances. The Government resisted this proposal partly on the basis that it could have unintended consequences for the sector. However, we recognise that a majority of Members in the other place believe strongly that pub-owning companies need the threat of tenants going free of tie before they will offer their tenants a fair tied deal. The elected Chamber has spoken by voting this into the Bill and the Government have listened.
On that basis, I can confirm today that the Government intend to accept in principle the introduction of a market rent only option. Our focus now will be on making this option workable to ensure that tied tenants are no worse off than free-of-tie tenants and to minimise the risks of unintended consequences, such as job losses.
Lord Snape (Lab)
I wonder whether the Minister will allow me to intervene. I am sure that the House will recognise how far the Government have moved on this and will welcome that movement. However, can she assure us that any future discussions will involve representatives of the tenants and will not be dominated by the pubcos?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
My Lords, I can assure the noble Lord that we are always discussing these issues and changes with tenants—that is extremely important when you are making changes of any kind—and, indeed, they have helped us to get to the position that we are now in. I thank the noble Lord for raising the point.
As I bring my opening remarks to their conclusion, I would like to take this opportunity to put on the record my thanks to the right honourable Member for West Suffolk and the Member for East Dunbartonshire, both of whom steered this Bill so successfully through the sometimes choppy waters in the other place, ensuring its safe and timely arrival in this House. I know that they will be continuing their keen interest as we move through the stages in this House. This Bill is important because it provides a number of significant benefits for small businesses, and they constitute a vital part of the economic framework of our nation. I commend it to the House and I beg to move.
Lord Snape
My Lords, this is indeed a long and complicated Bill, in many ways, that has been welcomed from both sides of your Lordships’ House. As has also been said from both sides, it is rather timid in some areas, a couple of which I intend to touch on in my contribution.
I was struck by the comment earlier from the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, who, if I may summarise what he said, suggested that when all parties agree, invariably there are problems as far as legislation is concerned. The view was often expressed during my time in the Whips’ Office—that somewhat cynical apparatus of state, if that is the right term, in the other place—that gloom would descend if it was visibly apparent that all sides of the House were united on a particular issue. That was largely on the grounds, we felt, that if everyone agrees, as the noble Viscount said, it probably will not work.
However, there are matters within the Bill that people do agree on and that I hope do work. The late payment proposals are welcome and overdue. The fact is that small businesses in particular have great difficulty in getting their money out of larger companies, which often behave in a way that they would not tolerate from their own debtors. The attempt within the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill to bring them to heel is more than welcome. Similarly, on zero-hours contracts my noble friend Lord Mitchell, who is not in his place at the moment, spoke vehemently about the need to abolish such contracts, particularly the exclusivity parts of those contracts, which indeed should have no place in the modern workplace.
I want to concentrate the bulk of my—hopefully brief—remarks on Part 4 of the Bill, on the future of pubcos and, in particular, the relationship between some of the pubcos and their tenants. All of us who take an interest in these matters will be aware of the pathos of the sad cases involving many tenants of pubcos. Many of them have written, I know, to noble Lords on both sides of the House about the problems that they have had. However, at this stage I should perhaps issue a disclaimer about my current physical appearance. I would like the House to bear in mind that the bruises and black eye that I suffer at the moment came as a result of medical intervention rather than occurring on licensed premises. So that is not the reason why I shall express the view that I do.
I would sum up the problems that many tenants of pubcos have by quoting an e-mail that I received in the last few days from a couple, Dawn and Michael Shanahan, who run the Bulls Head in Old Whittington near Chesterfield—not a part of the world I know particularly well. I received their assurances that they did not object to their names and address being heard during the course of our debate. They talk about their relationship with the pubco Enterprise Inns:
“Lord Snape,
Our story is short but not very sweet”—
it was Mrs Shanahan who sent the e-mail.
“I have lived in the village all my life. I am now 60 years young. When the Bulls head came up for lease 6 years ago we decided that we could bring it back to life as a thriving village community pub. I left a job with the ambulance service and my husband retired from 40 years joinery. We didnt count on any person in this world being as conniving and devious as enterprise are. Our plan was to run the pub for 8 years and then sell the lease on, what a joke that turned out to be!!. We have put all our money, time and energy into trying to run a business that had no chance of success from the beginning. The whole model is designed on people sinking their money into a pub, failing and reeling the next unsuspecting victim in. We have survived for the whole of our time here by robbing Peter to pay Paul. We work all the hours ourselves, we dont take a wage and are now totally wiped out and skint, we have no option but to walk away with nothing but leaving enterprise with a cleaner, better maintained pub for the next person to add to, or to undo all the work we have done, enterprise dont really care as long as the money keeps coming their way.”
“Because we went to our bdm”—
their regional manager—
“asking for help and making it clear we have no more money to offer they came up with a proposal. They would loan us the money to … refurbish the pub and put us on ‘the beacon Scheme’. This would have made us managers and if we didnt hit a certain amount of barrelage a week would have given them the right to give us 8 weeks notice to quit. So they were willing to loan us thousands of pounds knowing full well we would not be able to pay it back. That would have left us homeless but still paying for a newly refurbished pub!. When we refused their answer to us was to cut our credit off. So even though we didnt owe them any money we now have to pay for our beer before they will deliver it. They deliberately put you in a position where you have to buy out of tie and then fine you and remind you that you have broke your terms and conditions of your lease. We are desperately trying to hold on until after christmas. Whatever happens within the law now, will be too late to help us but our stories must make a difference and stop these unscrupulous business practices that ruin peoples lives. I am crying as i write this because we have been so naive and trusting and have put our heart and soul into this Pub that has been our home. We have nothing left but debt to look forward to and will be coming out feeling like the worse failures. Please stop these people”.
I think that summarises what is happening as far as relationships between tenants and pubcos like Enterprise Inns and Punch are concerned.
I have a personal story before I sit down. My own daughter and son-in-law ran a pub, an Enterprise Inns pub called the Red Lion in Longdon Green in Staffordshire. They invested all their life savings into the pub—an almost six-figure sum. Like Mr and Mrs Shanahan, when occasionally they had problems paying their bills, the pubco stopped delivering beer, leaving them with no choice—they cannot get beer from anywhere else—but to buy out of tie. They were then fined £500 a time by the pubco. My son-in-law was badly beaten in the pub by a couple he had befriended previously one New Year about seven years ago, and he has never worked since. In the three months that he was in intensive care, Enterprise Inns expressed a view to my daughter that they “had no duty of care to any publican”. My daughter and son-in-law eventually left the pub, literally with nothing, and my son-in-law will never work again. Of course, someone else then took over the tenancy of the Red Lion in Longdon Green, left after about six months and the building was then sold to another company. It has since been refurbished and is a going concern as a restaurant and pub. That is how tenants of the pubcos are being treated.
Although I am grateful that the Minister opened this debate saying that the Government were prepared to accept the amendment from the other place, I would like more clarification from her about any future consultation before these particular clauses— Clause 40 and the succeeding clauses—are redrafted to ensure, as I indicated in a question to her earlier, that the pubcos will not be allowed to turn back the clock and behave in the way that Jeremy Paxman in the current issue of The Spectator this week describes:
“Publican after publican has been telling the same story for years, of spivs from rapacious ‘pubcos’ driving them to penury through a beer-buying arrangement more suited to the truck shop on a slave plantation”.
It is some years since your Lordships’ House passed the Truck Acts, and it is about time that we passed another Act outlawing some of the practices of the pubcos. I welcome the clauses from Clause 40 onwards, although they go only so far, and I hope that the Minister can assure us that there will be no attempt to turn back the clock and allow these nefarious practices to continue.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)
My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Young of Norwood Green. He is always engaging. I shall come back to the pub in a minute but hope that he will not take offence if I gently remind him that one of the reasons for the high levels of employment is the flexible labour markets introduced by this Government. Some of the removal of flexibility that he was recommending, proposing or thinking about would reduce employment, which we all agree it is essential to preserve.
If one is 23rd in the speakers list, much of what one wants to say has been said already—sometimes more than once; sometimes several times over. However, like other noble Lords, I agree with and support the Government for what they are proposing. I have some questions that we shall wish to examine in Committee but applaud the general direction of travel. I want to make just three points.
First, I congratulate the Government on taking up the challenges of pre-pack administrations in Part 10. Pre-packs have been promoted as a way of saving jobs in the firm in question—and they may well do so. However, in my experience, the ability to write off debts often appears close to a fraud on the creditors. When the firm that has been pre-packed arises like a phoenix from the ashes, no one considers the position of the creditors in the firms that have lost everything. Job losses may have been avoided in the pre-packed firm but may well have been replaced by job losses in the creditor firms. Nowhere is this more important than in pre-packs involving connected parties. I am therefore very glad that the Government are going to tackle this aspect, and I look forward to discussing the details of this in Committee.
My second point concerns the procurement provisions in Part 3. I wrote a report for the Government entitled Unshackling Good Neighbours, which, inter alia, looked at the problems and regulatory burdens that inhibited the growth of small companies, charities and voluntary groups. It is not yet clear to me that the well meaning provisions in Clauses 38 and 39 will enable the Government to tackle the fundamental issues that too often put smaller companies at a competitive disadvantage. The noble Earl, Lord Lytton, referred to these. In particular, it is the innate conservatism of commissioners, for whom risk aversion is the default option. Of course, one has to applaud the objective, as explained in the memorandum that my noble friend on the Front Bench so kindly circulated, which is,
“to create a simple and consistent approach to procurement across all public sector authorities”.
However, we have been here before. Four years ago, the Merlin commissioning approach, designed to provide a common governmental template—originally devised by the Department for Work and Pensions—was then being rolled out across government generally. What has happened to Merlin; where has it gone to? Perhaps my noble friend could let us know, either by letter or when she responds.
My final point is about the pub tie, on which, as others have mentioned, the Government suffered a defeat in the House of Commons. I am afraid that I am going to have to upset the noble Lords, Lord Snape and Lord Young, because I was disappointed to hear that the Government do not propose to reflect further on this decision. The arguments are not as simple and straightforward as our colleagues down the corridor believe.
In making these comments, I have to recognise two things. First, in any dispute that can be broadly characterised as David versus Goliath, the British people will instinctively side with David. It is one of our most endearing national characteristics to want to stick up for the little man. Secondly, in any arrangement involving more than 20,000 people—and there are between 20,000 and 25,000 tied pubs—there will always be problems, difficulties or misbehaviours. While we need to deal with and remedy these, they must be set in context and proportion to the whole.
Lord Snape
I apologise for interrupting the noble Lord, but before he leaves that point will he at the next stage of the Bill bring forward some evidence from satisfied pubco tenants about how wonderful their relationship is with Enterprise Inns or Punch Taverns?
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts
I shall be glad to bring forward some evidence. I have some here but, given the hour, I should not be talking about the Black Bull, Mansfield, which is one of the pubs on which I have some evidence for the noble Lord. We will discuss this at a later stage.
There are two types of integrated pub. The first, called integrated operators, are companies that brew beer and sell it through their own estate, whether managed by employees or tenants in tied pubs. They sell their beers also through supermarkets, free houses and off-licences, but their estate is an important route to market. The second group consist of what are known as pubcos. They do not brew any beer but buy it in, often from the breweries of the integrated operators. Their focus—which the noble Lord, Lord Snape, is driving at—is on rental levels. They are, to some extent, very specialist property companies.
Noble Lords may wonder how on earth this rather counterintuitive second group came into existence. As my noble friend Lord Stoneham of Droxford said earlier, it is the result of a decision of Parliament. The beer orders were designed to strip the breweries of too much market power, and the pubcos were the result. If our predecessors all those years ago had seen where we were going to end up, they might have considered it better to think of an alternative business model. If we do not revisit the decision to end the tie, our successors in 20 years from now may find that, far from this decision slowing pub closures, it may well accelerate them.
Before I get into the rest of my remarks, I need to remind the House that I was, until a year ago, a director of an integrated brewery. We had five breweries, two big and three small, stretching from Cumbria to the New Forest, and more than 2,000 pubs—500 managed and the balance tied in various forms.
Why is it that pubs arouse such strong emotions? In some large measure it is the result of the image that we have of a community—a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, earlier this afternoon. That community has three aspects: a church, a post office with a shop and a pub. We may not wish to use them much: we may go to the church on high days and holidays and for hatches, matches and dispatches; to the shop or the post office only to buy the milk when we have forgotten to buy it at the supermarket; and to the pub only for the occasional drink. However, we like them to be there. We also like them for the ambiance we believe they project. We all have our image of the ideal pub: the welcoming atmosphere, the cheery landlord dispensing pints and homespun philosophy over the bar. However, for reasons quite unconnected with the brewers, the pubcos or the tenants, the pub sector is under severe strain.
I identify three fundamental features behind this. The first is the rapid rate of socioeconomic change in Britain. Twenty-five years ago, the company of which I was a director would have operated probably a dozen pubs in Kidderminster, the home of the carpet trade. The carpet trade has gone and there are three pubs left. In areas of Nottingham, Leicester, Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham the increase in the Muslim population, who do not drink, leads to many pub closures. It is exceptionally hard for a publican who has put 10 years of his life into trying to build up a business to accept the inevitabilities of these tides of history.
Secondly, there is the inexorable rise of regulation and of cost generally. Noble Lords may not be aware that, for many pubs, business rates and council tax are more important items than rent.
Thirdly, there is the availability of low-priced alcohol in supermarkets. The average price of a pint in a UK supermarket last year was £1.13. It would be substantially less in the weeks leading up to Christmas and in the few days before a bank holiday. If any noble Lord can find a pub, tied or untied, that is selling lager at less than £2.50 a pint—more than double the price in a supermarket—let me know and we will go along to sample the wares.
These are trends that defy King Canute, so pubs are likely to continue to close. The reasons for closure may be portrayed as rapacious owners increasing rent, wishing to profit by turning pubs into houses or corner stores, but the tide is turning against the ordinary pub. To offset this trend, the pub has to offer an experience and value for money for its target market: maybe with food, with fine dining or pub grub; maybe for families, with play areas for kids; maybe for younger men, with Sky Sports and pub games; maybe for younger women, with more of a wine bar feel to the place; or maybe for pensioners, with cheap food, particularly at lunch. However, this all requires operational experience and capital resources. It is this that pub owners can provide. It is exceptionally difficult to find capital for all the sorts of things that are required to refurbish a pub—kitchen fittings, signage, fixtures and fittings of one sort or another—and it is the pub owners who can do this.
The balancing item is the tie. The brewery is assured an outlet for its beer and other drinks, though it should always be remembered that every bit of profit from the foods goes to the tenants alone. Remove the tie and you risk removing this ladder, by which many people have become very satisfactorily self-employed. No pub owner is going to invest many thousands of pounds—hundreds of thousands of pounds in some cases—in refurbishing a pub if the tenant can then walk away from supply agreements.
In an effort to lance this boil of suspicion about rents and treatment, some breweries have introduced a franchise agreement, which has been approved by the British Franchise Association. This means that the tenant is in exactly the same position as a franchisee selling hamburgers, pizzas or ice-cream. The Bill apparently proposes to ban even these arrangements. To do so only where they involve a pub and not, for example, a McDonald’s outlet, seems to me to be illogical, perverse and unfair.
My final word must go beyond your Lordships’ House to the wider world: the most important thing to do if you wish to save your local pub is to use it. If you do not, you will lose it whether it is tied or not. I look forward to some vigorous debates in Committee.