Pub Companies

Debate between Greg Mulholland and Caroline Lucas

Thursday 12th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey) on securing this important debate and commend the excellent Business, Innovation and Skills Committee report.

It is deeply worrying that the pub market in the UK has become so dominated by just a handful of companies. Tenants are being ripped off by those companies, which can overcharge for beer because the tenants are tied to them. The pub tie has been instrumental in hundreds of successful local pubs going to the wall, which continues.

Lessees can currently buy only a limited range of beer, often at inflated prices, which restricts pub goers’ choice, prevents small local brewers selling to such pubs and remorselessly accelerates the number of pub closures. That scandal must stop. The Chair of the Committee has reminded the House in both his motion and his speech that the Secretary of State promised action to save our pubs if the industry did not get its house in order, but neither the industry nor the Secretary of State has delivered. That is why this debate is so important.

I welcome the introduction of a new arbitration service, and requirements to follow rental guidelines and to publish national wholesale price lists, but the package as a whole will do little to stop pub closures or to provide meaningful support for sustainable local community pubs.

[Greg Mulholland]

Apart from concerns about the misrepresentation of PICAS, does the hon. Lady share licensees’ concerns that although PICAS is set up to be an independent arbitrator, it will be funded and controlled by the British Beer and Pub Association, and therefore the pub companies?

[Caroline Lucas]

That is a good point. I was trying to find something positive to say, but the hon. Gentleman is right that there are concerns about that aspect.

The Government’s response has failed to address the key issues of providing lessees with a genuine free-of-tie option. It will therefore not rebalance the relationship between struggling licensees and large pub companies. I am also concerned that even the limited package that has been announced will not actually be delivered, given the pub companies’ history of broken promises and abandoned commitments.

As other hon. Members have said, pubs are central to our communities. Chris Beaumont, the landlord of The Greys in the Hanover area of my constituency, tells me that his is the only pub in the area that has not closed and reopened in the last nine years. The London Unity has had three owners in two years, The Geese has changed hands four times in six years, and the Horse and Groom recently closed and reopened. In the pub trade, such closing and reopening is known as churn. Churn matters, because it means ruined livelihoods for the individual landlords and their families. It also means instability for our pubs and our local economy. It takes years to build up a great community pub. A high turnover of pub landlords as pubs regularly close and reopen sends out a negative message that times are not good and that it is difficult to survive in an area, which clearly does not help other local businesses. The tied scheme was a significant factor in all the closures I mentioned, but the pubcos would prefer that we did know about it: the data on pubs that close do not tell of pubs that close and reopen.

The other thing that pubcos are less than honest about is that when they sit down and negotiate with lessees, they claim that lessees can always be free of tied options, yet often fail to mention that they must pay a premium to qualify for that. On wines and spirits, the charge is between £4,000 and £5,000 extra per year. It is a similar amount for bottled beers. To put that into context, the typical annual rent for a pub tenant in Brighton is around £25,000 a year. Pubcos are therefore essentially extorting an additional 20% increase on the rent to free landlords from the tie. Furthermore, pubcos do not generally offer an untied option on draught beers or lagers.

The Government must listen to lessees such as Chris and the many others in my constituency represented by the Brighton & Hove Licensees Association. They are all deeply worried and believe as I do that it is high time the Government acted to protect community pubs and lessees. Pubs are pivotal to the economy and the tourist industry, so the health of the sector has a particular resonance in my constituency.

Parliamentary Reform

Debate between Greg Mulholland and Caroline Lucas

Thursday 3rd February 2011 Westminster Hall

[Caroline Lucas]

The hon. Gentleman’s intervention indicates that changing the sitting hours alone is not enough. We must change what we do within those hours. I am sure that it is not beyond the wit of this Parliament to arrange our sitting hours so that people can do enough preparation for their Committees, and so that officials have time to prepare the speaker for urgent questions, or whatever. Do we want this House to set an example by working relatively family-friendly hours or not? If we do, other things will fall into place.

[Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)]

I praise the hon. Lady for securing this debate, and for her reforming zeal. I agree with her on matters such as voting, and I think we should look at the shape of the Chamber. However, can we stop the myth of family-friendly hours? It is not a family-friendly job. When we talk about family-friendly hours, we are talking about not only MPs from London and the south-east, but those whose constituencies are outside London, but whose families live down here. I want to take my daughter to school, and that should be part of the debate. I want to cram things in as much as possible so that I can get home to my family.

[Caroline Lucas]

I do not think that family friendliness is a myth. The way this House works ought, where possible, to give some kind of signal about what we hope for and aspire to for those who work in the rest of the country. If we rearrange the way we work, it should be possible to sit on a Tuesday morning, for example, and get much of the work done. We would not then need to sit late into Tuesday night. If hon. Members want to have meetings at that time, that is up to them, but I do not see why that process should hold everybody else hostage.

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Lucas]

It is probably out of order for me to reflect upon that, Mr Benton, but I would argue that one way to improve our debates would be to have more interventions and fewer set pieces. I hope that I am not being disrespectful.

I want to make one last point about electronic voting. If we make the process of casting votes less time-consuming, MPs could vote on more aspects of Bills. As a result, the public would have a clearer record on which to hold us to account. A system that inherently discourages voting on the specifics of Bills because it takes too long to vote is a problem. It also requires less thought from those charged with passing legislation through the House. Speeding up voting would enable us to be better legislators by giving better scrutiny.

[Greg Mulholland]

I share the hon. Lady’s desire to speed up voting; I was using electronic voting when a member of Leeds city council. To make it work in the House, do we not need to consider the reality of the Chamber? In most Parliaments that have electronic voting, Members have an assigned desk with a voting button, and many Parliaments use laptops, but we could not possibly do those things in the present Chamber.

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I passingly considered how radical it might be to propose that we do not sit in the Chamber, but decided that I should probably wait for a few more years before making such a proposal.

I discussed the matter with a company that specialises in the manufacture of electronic voting devices. It said that we could make them operable in the Chamber and in the Lobbies on either side—there is not enough space for all Members to be in the Chamber, as has been pointed out—but they could be made to work only within that area, so there would be no danger of people going to the pub with one in their pocket, with all the disrepute that would involve. There are ways of getting around the problem. I would be the first to admit that it would be much easier if each of us had our own place in the Chamber, but I believe that it is still possible to get around the problem.