Greg Mulholland
Main Page: Greg Mulholland (Liberal Democrat - Leeds North West)Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
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Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills if he will make a statement on the appointment of the first Pubs Code Adjudicator.
The Minister for Small Business, Industry and Enterprise (Anna Soubry)
As I announced to the House yesterday, Paul Newby has been appointed as the first Pubs Code Adjudicator. I hope the House will join me in congratulating him on his appointment. I pay tribute and say thank you to all those who applied for this important position. I also pay tribute, as I am sure the House will, to all the candidates in an excellent and very strong field.
Mr Newby will start his work full time on 2 May. He has actually already started work. He has been very helpful to my officials in making sure that we have the pub code up and running, and ready to come before this House. Paul Newby is a chartered surveyor with a particular expertise in valuation and arbitration, key skills for the Pubs Code Adjudicator. He has 30 years’ experience of the pub trade, working with pub company landlords and pub tenants. I think he will be an excellent Pubs Code Adjudicator.
Greg Mulholland
I am afraid that is not a view shared by tenants’ groups, who have been absolutely astonished by this appointment. Let us be clear, this is the appointment of someone who is a director of a company that derives the majority of its income from the very companies the legislation is intended to regulate. By his own admission—it is on his CV—he has been engaged by numerous managed and tenanted pubcos on rent review matters. In the past five years he has acted for Enterprise Inns, Marston’s and Punch Taverns. The very companies he is currently acting for are bullying and coercing tenants into signing away their rights or forfeiting pubs. His company is actively involved in selling off pubs. How can he possibly be trusted to be impartial, given that for 20 years his salary has been dependent on those he must now adjudicate on and potentially impose financial penalties on? There is a clear conflict of interest, which appears to render this process extremely dubious at the very least.
I must ask the Minister for urgent clarification. Did Mr Newby, as a director, declare how much of the income of the company he works for is derived from the companies he will supposedly adjudicate on? Will he be stepping down from his role as director of Fleurets during the four-year period? How can tenants have any confidence in this appointment? Why has a chartered surveyor been appointed, rather than someone from a legal background or an independent arbitrator? How was this process conducted? We do not know who was involved, how many candidates were involved or who made the final decision.
This is a very worrying appointment that once again demonstrates either complicity with pubco influence or an utter lack of understanding and knowledge of the issues and the conflicts in the sector. It is in danger of making a laughing stock of the adjudicator’s role. Tenant groups predict that if this appointment is allowed to stand, the statutory reforms will go the same way as the failed self-regulatory regime. It is a crass, complicit and clueless appointment, and it now needs to be properly scrutinised by the House.
Anna Soubry
That was an absolutely disgraceful set of slurs—[Interruption.] I would appreciate it if the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland) would be good enough to listen. Paul Newby was appointed absolutely in accordance with the usual ways of public appointments, and I take very grave exception to any allegation that either I or anybody else has acted improperly or with complicity. As I said, Mr Newby has represented not just pub trade companies but tenants. He has 30 years’ experience effectively representing both sides. He is an experienced arbitrator, and the great skills he brings to this position do not just include his extensive experience of the pub trade industry; like many professionals, he has the absolute ability to be fair and to arbitrate fairly. The fact that he might be representing somebody does not mean he is in their pay; he can act independently.
Anna Soubry
Oh no. The hon. Gentleman does not understand how professionals work, and many of us take great exception—[Interruption.] Opposition Members would do better not to heckle about somebody they do not even know. They have not looked at his antecedents. I made the announcement only yesterday in this place at about 7 o’clock. I have no doubt that Mr Newby’s considerable experience and ability to do the job are first rate, and I take great exception to the idea that there has been an impropriety.