Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill

Debate between Greg Mulholland and Liz McInnes

Tuesday 18th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Greg Mulholland]

That is helpful but I shall make it clear; the point of new clause 2 is that it is a stand-alone clause and has no bearing on that matter. I understand the position of those hon. Members with family brewers. They can support their family brewers if they wish by opposing new clause 6, but they can still support new clause 2, which, as I say, will apply not to a single family brewer but only to the large pub-owning companies. We have defined that very deliberately, which the Government failed to do despite our telling them that they should. A Member can vote for their family brewer by voting for new clause 2. To be clear; it is primary legislation and cannot then be changed without other primary legislation. It is not being put into the statutory code—secondary legislation—as some measures are. That is precisely why we have done it.

There has been a shameful campaign of misinformation against new clause 2 and the market rent only option from the usual suspects; the large pub companies and their mouthpiece, the so-called British Beer and Pub Association. In reality it is the big brewers and pubco association. They have been lobbying vociferously, making a whole stream of utterly baseless comments. It is simply scaremongering to suggest that somehow these companies offering a fair commercial rent to their tenants would cause collapse, chaos and closures.

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Greg Mulholland]

I remind the House of what was said by the BIS Select Committee in its follow-up report in 2011—

[Liz McInnes]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Greg Mulholland]

Let me finish my point and I will give way. The Select Committee said:

“The BBPA (British Beer and Pub Association) has shown itself to be impotent in enforcing its own timetable for reform and the supposed threat of removing the membership of pub companies who did not deliver was hollow.”

Just last year the chief executive of the British Beer and Pub Association misled the Select Committee and said two things that were factually untrue, as well as presenting a series of baseless evidence.

Finally, before I give way, I will read what the Select Committee said in its 2008-09 report:

“As is noted elsewhere in this Report…in evidence to us both Mr Thorley of Punch and Mr Tuppen and Mr Townsend of Enterprise Inns made assertions which, on investigation, proved to give a partial picture, or on one occasion were positively false.”

Members on all sides of the House can know exactly how to take the absurd and baseless claims from those organisations.

[Liz McInnes]

Like the hon. Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray), I am seeking clarification on small family brewers. I, too, am confused by the effect of the proposal on J.W. Lees brewery in my constituency, which has fewer than 500 pubs but has a strong retail arm. I am concerned—as is the brewery, which asked me to raise the issue during the debate— about the effect it will have on a family brewer with fewer than 500 pubs but which has a strong retail arm.

[Greg Mulholland]

I thought I had given clarity. I ask the hon. Lady and all hon. Members to read this detailed new clause, as this is precisely why all of us who have been involved in writing it have done so. Let me read new clause 2(4):

“For the purposes of this section,”

meaning the market rent only option,

“the definition of a ‘large pub-owning business’ is a business which, for a period of at least six months in the previous financial year, was the landlord of—

(a) 500 or more pubs (of any description)”.

That cannot apply to any family brewer, and because it is in primary legislation, it cannot be changed in the future.