The Future of Pubs

Chris Skidmore Excerpts

Thursday 9th December 2010 Westminster Hall

[Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)]

This issue is of huge importance to my constituency. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart), I shall focus on rural pubs in isolated villages. In truth, my constituency has nothing but small villages. There is nothing else there.

The rural pub has played a huge part in my life—and, indeed, in the lives of all who have lived the same sort of life as me. I left school when I was 16. I joined my father on the family farm because he was ill, and I became an active member of the local young farmers club. It was incidental that the local pub was a place to drink; it was the social centre of my life. The young farmers club would sometimes meet there, or sometimes adjourn there after its meeting.

We probably did not go for the purpose of drinking to the Horse Shoe, the Lion or the Talbot—nor the Nag’s Head, which sadly closed but which I am delighted to say is on the point of reopening. We would probably have gone out four or five nights a week, and the pubs would have been full, with a huge amount of activity.

Many people do not appreciate the importance of darts and dominos in small villages. Almost everyone in our village plays darts or dominos. I hesitate to say that visiting the local pub so often was the ideal training for becoming a Member of Parliament, but there is an element of that. For example, there is the sheer pressure of playing dominos when the entire pub is looking on to see what you drop. Members have told me of the sheer awesomeness of making a maiden speech, but that is nothing compared with my experience of playing for the Wellington B team in the final of the Richards cup at Welshpool; it was standing room only, and a message was passed to the other room about the wrong domino that I dropped when we were two-all and I was No. 5. The point is that the rural pub is important to small villages.

Before becoming a Member of Parliament, I was involved in various activities, including being president of the Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales—I say this because I want to put the rural pub in a slightly wider context—although I gave up that post when I became a Member, as I felt that there was a degree of conflict, as well a problem with time. The dominant issue when I became president a few years ago was onshore wind farms. Everyone thought that that was the only thing that we wanted to discuss. However, if anyone asked me what was the most important issue for the organisation during my years as president, I always said that it was rural services. That was far and away the most important matter in rural villages in Wales, and it was probably the same in rural England.

We know of the pressures on small schools, which continue to close in my constituency and in that of the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams); our education authorities are inextricably linked. Many of our local shops are closing. In the last year or two we have seen a significant number of post offices closing—and we consistently see small rural pubs closing.

In an intervention, I expressed my antipathy towards, and discomfort with, new laws and regulations, and that is an instinctive part of my politics. However, if we thought seriously about what we should do about the disappearance of local services, we could not say that we should not resort to regulation if appropriate. We have to take a common-sense position; we should act proportionately and be prepared to do things that we may instinctively dislike. If we are serious about retaining our local services, we will have to do so.

A number of concerns have been mentioned today, but in some ways it is about our attitude. Several of my hon. Friends spoke about the planning process. I can speak with some freedom, because many planning matters are devolved in my constituency, so I shall not be at variance with what the Minister might say. We need a different frame of mind. We need to be willing not always to work with a book of rules and laws and consider every application exactly in line with them. We need common sense. We see applications being turned down when everyone knows that it makes no sense to do so.

This is to do with the whole gamut of rural services, not just local pubs. I look forward to the Protection of Local Services (Planning) Bill, which will receive its Second Reading in the new year. It will be a really interesting Bill for all Members, as it will show what we are prepared to do to protect rural services. It will be a philosophical debate.

[Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con)]

I am enjoying my hon. Friend’s speech. Many rural pubs are historic institutions, which have been around for centuries, often in listed buildings. They are hubs of the community.

We have spoken of the willingness not to resort automatically to legislation and regulation, but I wonder what my hon. Friend’s views are on using preservation orders for the historic buildings of country pubs if there is a change of use or if they close temporarily. The White Hart in the village of Bitton in my constituency has lain empty for two years, and Punch Taverns has sold off the freehold to many pubs. There is a risk that such pubs will be transformed and put to a completely different use. It may be against our instinct, but we should use legislation or regulation to preserve rural pubs that have been in use for centuries.

[Glyn Davies]

I sympathise with my hon. Friend’s proposal, but I cannot be precise in my opinion. We have to approach the Protection of Local Services (Planning) Bill and other legislation with common sense. It is certainly a valid view if the pub plays a significant part in the local community. Pubs sometimes close not because they are not viable but because they have been made unviable by people who see an opportunity to make more money out of them. That is what I meant by considering not only pure planning policies. I know of the difficulty of making certain that every decision is taken with a view to what an inspector might say. However, I believe that as parliamentarians we have to use common sense and flexibility in delivering what we want, and retaining public services in rural areas is incredibly important.

I want to touch on two other issues that matter to me. Attitude is important. I was a Member of the National Assembly for Wales when the smoking ban was passed. My libertarian instincts are such that I was one of only six Members who opposed the legislation. Although I do not want to criticise another parliamentary body, I must say that when we initiated a debate about wanting to retain a smoking room, or a place in which people could smoke without affecting anyone else, there was a comprehensive antipathy towards the whole idea. Although I felt that we were arguing on a rational basis—I thought that the case that we were making was bombproof—it was almost as if there was no willingness at all to compromise or to look at common sense, and it is that attitude that we need to change.

I should like to go into the supermarket issue, but I will not, because it has been covered so extensively. Diversification—or co-location or amalgamation of services—is a crucial way in which we can retain rural services. I can cite some superb examples from the area in which I live: two community shops have just opened and two pubs have taken on post office business. We have wonderful new community shops in Trefeglws and in Llanfechan; I officially opened one of them and went to the opening of the other fairly recently. We need to see such developments if we are to retain local services. Planning authorities and local authorities need to support such enterprises and give them every encouragement.

As I have earned my living through farming, I understand the problem with supermarkets selling goods at a lower price. It will be incredibly difficult to resolve that. Taxation is one way in which we can deal with it, but the levies that would be imposed would have to be very high indeed. The agriculture industry has an ombudsman who looks at the position and can say to the developer, “Oh, you are being unreasonable”. There are many good examples, but there are also many bad examples, and we must find a way in which to highlight them if we want to defend our local services.