Pubs Code: Guest Beers

Debate between Josh MacAlister and Julie Minns

Tuesday 12th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Ms Minns]

I thank the hon. Member for that intervention. I will come later in my speech to other points that the Society of Independent Brewers and Associates is campaigning on. I will make a little more progress.

Recently in Cumbria, the Carlsberg Marston’s Brewing Company closed Cumbria’s principal brewery, Jennings in Cockermouth, and brought to an end 200 years of local brewing. The need to create opportunities for local breweries to sell their local beer to local drinkers in Carlisle is, therefore, more pressing than ever.

[Josh MacAlister (Whitehaven and Workington) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate. I have two fantastic breweries in my constituency—Tractor Shed and Ennerdale Brewery—which are not that far from Carlisle, despite the state of some of the roads and rail. Would it not be fantastic if more Cumbrian breweries found a route to Cumbrian pubs for their fantastic beer?

[Ms Minns]

I agree with my hon. Friend. From March next year, pub tenants just 700 yards from my constituency will be able to open up a direct relationship with local breweries such as those that my hon. Friend referred to and have beer from small independent breweries served to their customers. The Scottish pubs code, championed by the Labour MSP for West Scotland, who brought it forward as a Member’s Bill, is due to be introduced in 2025. It is similar in many respects to our own pubs code, which governs England and Wales, but for one crucial element. In regulating the relationship between tied pub landlords and tenants, it aims to promote fairness and equitable treatment within tied pub lease agreements. It also allows Scottish pub tenants to enter into a guest beer agreement whereby the tenant can sell at least one beer in any format—including cask and keg —chosen by them at a price they determine. They can change that as frequently as they wish. The beer must be of a brand where less than 5,000 hectolitres—I am reliably told that is about 875,000 pints—was produced in the previous production year. That means that it is beer from small local breweries that qualifies and not that from the larger breweries.

That will empower tenants, allowing them to respond to their customers’ requests, and support small local breweries. Introducing a guest beer agreement in the rest of the UK could be worth £28 million to local breweries. It would widen consumer choice, help landlords and support small local businesses, so I am delighted that the Chancellor and Ministers have been watching developments in Scotland closely and promised in the Budget last month a consultation on ways to encourage small breweries to retain and expand their access to UK pubs. The consultation provides an opportunity to maximise consumer choice and support local businesses by enabling more guest beers. It is an important development, and it shows that the Government want local community businesses to have the opportunity to compete, grow and expand.

As we have heard, 78% of the beer sold in our pubs comes from just five global brewing companies. In comparison, our 1,700 small breweries represent only about 6% of the market. That needs to be urgently reviewed to ensure that there is a level playing field where small businesses can compete fully.

On that point, I congratulate the Society of Independent Brewers and Associates on the launch of its new “indie beer” campaign, which seeks to make it easier for beer drinkers to identify beer from independent breweries in pubs, bars and shops as demand for local beer rises across the UK. Research shows that most beer drinkers are unaware that the mass-marketed craft beer brands that we see in our pubs across the UK are in fact owned by global brewers. A good example of that from my own county is Wainwright beer. Inspired by the chronicler of our famous Cumbrian fells, the name Wainwright is synonymous with the county of Cumbria, and that leads many visitors to believe that they are sampling a locally brewed beer when they come to Cumbria; in fact, it is just one of a range of beers produced by the global beer company Carlsberg. The majority of beer consumers say that they want to buy beer from genuinely independent local breweries. I believe that SIBA’s campaign will help many more do just that.

These issues are wider than just the tenanted pub market, with small breweries facing restrictions in the leased, managed and free house pub markets as well. Perversely, many free houses are not free at all when it comes to beer. Sole supply contracts with global breweries are prevalent, restricting and determining what beers can be sold. Increasingly, these global breweries are also using proprietary equipment in pubs, which prevents a local brewery from even being able to connect their casks to the pub and offer their products to the landlord at all.

Publicans, brewers and beer consumers in my constituency hope that the Minister will be able to start the consultation process as soon as possible. I wonder whether the Minister may be able to offer some clarity on when that might commence, so that all interested parties can have the opportunity to provide their insights and experiences. It would also be appreciated if he could confirm that this will include issues experienced right across the UK, including in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Will it also look at the whole pub market, including tenanted, leased, managed and free houses? Will it include both keg and cask draught beer, which is predominately sold in our pubs?

Finally, will the Minister look closely at the Scottish guest beer agreement to see whether its provisions could be included in our own pubs code for England and Wales, perhaps as part of the statutory review of the pubs code, which I understand is due next year? Should the Minister ever find time in his busy diary, I would like to invite him to visit my constituency to meet some of my local breweries and to join me for a drink—albeit not a locally brewed one—in the Border Reiver, the last pub in Britain to have been designed, funded and built by the UK Government.

Nuclear Industry: Cumbria

Debate between Josh MacAlister and Julie Minns

Monday 14th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Josh MacAlister]

I agree with the hon. Member; I share many of the concerns of remoter parts of Wales and England and I think we both represent seats that have those issues. A plan in my constituency, which is not dissimilar to that of Wylfa, for a new 3.4 GW nuclear power plant to be built at Moorside, adjacent to Sellafield, collapsed in 2018. We now know that the previous Government did nothing to intervene or to assess the impact of that collapse on my community. Instead, they promised a new process that would deliver small modular reactors and set up Great British Nuclear to oversee it. That decision and others have allowed Conservative politicians to hide behind process for year after year, promising jam tomorrow. For my community and many others, it has been election after election of broken promises.

I first raised the alarm about potential roadblocks to new nuclear in Cumbria before the election, which is why I launched the New Nuclear Now campaign. However, it is only through questions asked since then that I have been able to uncover the roadblocks to siting new SMRs in Cumbria. Those roadblocks are specific to west Cumbria but are also a reflection of Britain’s problem with building.

I will briefly explain the exact nature of the problem. The crux of the issue lies in competing demands on the land designated for new nuclear at Moorside. In short, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority wants to use a large area of the land for the laydown of construction materials for future buildings that it hopes to construct on the Sellafield site as part of its decommissioning activity. Great British Nuclear needs to make a decision imminently about the site selection and, if Moorside is a contender, it needs to be confident that the land will be available for new nuclear plants. To put it simply, zero-sum thinking and the lack of a serious plan B from the NDA is putting the economic future of my community at risk.

[Ms Julie Minns (Carlisle) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that bringing new nuclear to our wonderful county is not just important for economic growth but absolutely essential if we are to attract new people to come and live in Cumbria, so we can grow our population and begin to overcome some of the demographic challenges we currently face?

[Josh MacAlister]

My hon. Friend and I frequently talk about the demographic challenges facing Cumbria, like many other post-industrial parts of our country. New nuclear can put those communities on the map and act as a magnet for inward investment and migration from elsewhere in the UK. Hypothetical future decommissioning work, not yet approved or funded by Government and that could use different available land, is putting a very real and current proposal to build new nuclear power at Moorside in jeopardy. That is simply unacceptable to me and to my community.

I am incredibly proud of the world-leading decommissioning work taking place at Sellafield. It is our biggest local employer, with 12,000 people directly employed and thousands more in the supply chain. The work being done there under the leadership of CEO Euan Hutton is truly groundbreaking, and it has ensured that west Cumbria will continue to play a crucial role in the nuclear industry well into the future. I will back any viable new projects that speed up decommissioning and create more opportunities for my community. What must change is that that work must become a springboard for Cumbria’s future opportunities and not simply an anchor providing security.

In truth, I have met too many people in Whitehall who think that we in west Cumbria should consider ourselves lucky to have what we have. I have absolutely no time for that sentiment. It shows a complete lack of regard for the members of a community who have been custodians of one of Europe’s most hazardous sites and who want and deserve a diverse economic future that is not simply dependent on one employer.

New nuclear is the key to creating that springboard to a diversified, vibrant and entrepreneurial economy. New nuclear would create a Cumbrian magnet for the energy-intensive industries hungry for the clean, reliable baseload power that only nuclear can provide. It would build on our existing world-leading workforce and strengthen it too. It would capitalise on the good will of a community whose members understand nuclear and are eager to get building. In short, new nuclear power generation is in no way incompatible with my community’s role in decommissioning. In fact, it is a mutually beneficial endeavour.

I understand the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority’s position—the clue is in the name. It is there to deliver safe, efficient and effective decommissioning programmes for our nuclear waste across the UK. However, under the Energy Act 2023 it also has a responsibility to work in the interests of the local community. Our community needs and deserves more than simply decommissioning work into the future.

I am confident that the NDA can come up with a plan B for its future that will preserve Moorside for its original purpose of new nuclear. I say that with confidence because until 2018 the NDA was planning on the basis of gigawatt-scale reactors at Moorside. My community, which overwhelmingly supports the building of new nuclear, and has the skills and expertise to deliver it, has a site designated for new nuclear, so my ask of the Minister is simple: I would like his Department to make clear the primacy of new nuclear use on sites currently designated for new nuclear over any other potential future uses of those bits of land—not just those in my constituency. I would like the land needed for new nuclear at Moorside transferred from the NDA to Great British Nuclear to make that intent clear.

GBN has taken ownership of other land for nuclear developments, and it is now time that the same should happen at Moorside. The clock is ticking on the need for that transfer of land, as GBN will make siting decisions in the coming months. I also ask that the Government support the NDA to come up with plans for laydown using other land available, and that they provide long-term confidence to the NDA on some of the major decommissioning choices that lie ahead, not least on plutonium. Finally, I would like the Department to instruct GBN to assess the Moorside site as it stands, and not on the basis of any other future land use, hypothetical or real. It is my firm belief that the Moorside site will score very highly without those roadblocks in its way.

West Cumbrians are ready to play our part in Britain’s new nuclear future. We are globally recognised in the nuclear sector as an area with a match-fit supply chain, decades of knowledge, and the experience needed to build complex nuclear technology. We have a strong skills base that wants to deliver the net zero infrastructure of the future, backed up by the excellent educational institutions needed. My hon. Friend the Minister and the Government have been handed a mess by their predecessors, which they are now being asked to fix at the eleventh hour. It is my hope that the new Government will support Cumbria in our ambitions, and remove the roadblocks that stand in our way.