The Future of Pubs

Debate between Dan Rogerson and Greg Mulholland

Thursday 9th December 2010 Westminster Hall

[Dan Rogerson (North Cornwall) (LD)]

Like others, I congratulate my hon. Friend on the huge amount of work that he has done on this subject. He talks about developers converting pubs and denying others the right to make a success of them. Are there not also examples, however, of owners who sell a pub on and, even though they do not wish to convert it themselves, make it clear by means of covenants and so on that they wish to prevent anyone from running it as a pub in the future?

[Greg Mulholland]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. I was coming to that, but I will cover it now. I have already raised with the Planning Minister some companies’ continued use of restrictive covenants, in which the company says, with no thought to the community’s rights, that a pub must never be allowed to be a pub again. That is a scandal. The previous Government said that they would outlaw that practice, which was a hugely welcome step. I am disappointed that the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) is no longer here, because I worked closely with him and I commend him on his work to support pubs. I ask the Minister to give us the good news for which we have all been waiting—CAMRA, in particular, has campaigned for this for many years—and to say that he will outlaw this totally anti-free market and anti-community practice once and for all.

Let me return to planning. I hope that I can address the concerns of the hon. Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths)—Burton is, of course, one of the most famous centres, if not the most famous centre, for brewing in the country. The save the pub group says that we need to include two things in the planning process for community pubs. First, we need a genuine period of community consultation, which some councils have and some do not. Secondly, there needs to be a viability test. If a small business is viable, it should have the opportunity to continue as a small business, and should not simply be closed because someone can make a large killing by closing it, as my hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands said.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Dan Rogerson and Greg Mulholland

Tuesday 19th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Greg Mulholland]

The hon. Lady reminds us that there are indeed many complications stemming from devolution in the three affected nations. As an English MP, however, my concern with devolution is that there is not yet a satisfactory solution for the English people at this stage—something for which I shall continue to push.

Whenever boundary changes are made or proposed, we see the disfranchisement of possibly hundreds of thousands of people. It results in two classes among the electorate. The first class comprises the people who can vote for someone again after the boundary changes are made; but then there are people in limbo in certain parts of our constituencies. We were their Member of Parliament leading up to the last election, but we knew and they knew that they could not vote for us. They could no longer realistically hold us to account. They could not realistically expect us to knock on their doors—again because they knew and we knew that they could not vote for us. They did not know who their candidates would be in the general election. That is chaos; it should not happen more frequently than once every 10 years. The idea of making boundary changes for every election is simply ridiculous. I hope that that point will be taken seriously on Report and in the other place.

[Dan Rogerson (North Cornwall) (LD)]

Some Members may not be aware of the knock-on effects on constituencies. The hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Turner) suggested that there might be marginal changes in subsequent boundary reviews. In fact, an urban extension might have an initial effect on the constituency involved and subsequent knock-on effects on others, and the change might be more radical each time a boundary was subjected to a review.

[Greg Mulholland]

My hon. Friend has made a good point. I am amazed that the reality of boundary changes is being accepted by so few Members, despite the effects that it will have on their constituents.

As Members who served before the last general election know all too well, there is also a huge problem with parliamentary protocol, which causes all sorts of squabbles and spats. According to the democratic process, I, as a candidate, had every right to knock on doors in the bits of the constituencies next to mine where I would be asking people to vote for me; yet, theoretically, parliamentary protocol says that I should not do so. I am afraid that such matters have simply not been considered.