Heritage Public Houses Bill
Debate between Kevin Bonavia and Matt Turmaine
Kevin Bonavia (Stevenage) (Lab)
I add my thanks to the hon. Member for Kingswinford and South Staffordshire (Mike Wood). This is a really important topic and I think every Member here today has done a sterling job in speaking up for the public houses in their communities. My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (Sarah Hall) just hit the nail on the head in her comprehensive contribution. The point is that we have to be very careful about what measures we take in this place in trying to support the pubs that we care for and love. We have to think about all the ways in which we can help pubs.
First, what do we all agree on in this House? I think we all agree that pubs are at the heart of our shared national identity. For centuries, they have provided the places where strangers will socialise, friendships are formed, local traditions are sustained and communities come together. They are part of our national story, but they are also part of the everyday lives, here and now, of people in towns and villages across the country.
There are those who, if trying to survey the worth of a public house, would start by evaluating the land it is built on and the size of its rooms, surveying the roof and the foundations for damage and so on. But I believe that what we have heard from Members today is an understanding that that method would fall far short of the true value that a pub holds in our community. It is more than the sum of its parts and the fabric of its building. It is centuries of conversation echoed off its walls, the generations of locals who have passed through its doors and worn the floorboards smooth, and the warm embrace it provides to individuals and families. It is knowing that you are in your local, that you are with friends and neighbours, and that when a stranger comes in you introduce yourself to them. You hear what is going on and keep in touch not on your mobile phone, but with living human beings. A pub can serve as a living memory of the community in which it sits. That is why it is the clearest embodiment of heritage that I can think of.
Despite the many differences in life today compared with the past, and changes in how many of us think of pubs, change is not unique to our time. I represent Stevenage, a town with a distinctive place in our national history as Britain’s first post-war new town, 80 years old next month. Do come along and celebrate with us.
Matt Turmaine
My hon. Friend mentions the new town status of his constituency. I wonder if he shares my thought that it presents a model for how new towns may be able to be rolled out elsewhere in the country.
Kevin Bonavia
My hon. Friend, also from Hertfordshire, makes a really important point. There are lessons to be learnt from new towns, including how we place pubs at the heart of our community. Stevenage is salutary in that respect. When the pioneers of Stevenage put our town together, they thought very carefully about the place. Many people deride the concept of 15-minute towns as some kind of conspiracy to try to keep us trapped in our homes—far from it. The pioneers of Stevenage thought that community centres had to be no more than 15 minutes from where people live, and at the heart of that community neighbourhood would be the pub. In every neighbourhood you go to in Stevenage, you will find a pub—or a former pub, and that is the point.
Kevin Bonavia
My hon. Friend asks whether I will be attending, and I really hope that I can, but whether or not people are there for Oasis, they should please come and see Knebworth. Before Oasis made their name in Knebworth in 1996 they started out in a pub, the Man in the Moon, in Stevenage.
Matt Turmaine
Having been an attendee at that concert in 1996, I wish to ask my hon. Friend whether he is aware that Liam Gallagher also frequented pubs in the neighbourhood where I grew up, and his favourite pint was a Guinness.
Kevin Bonavia
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. Far be it from me to cast aspersions about where Liam Gallagher has been drinking around the country, but I am sure wherever he goes, he brings joy to the venues he attends. The point about the Man in the Moon in Stevenage is that although it is only a few decades old, we need to make sure that it is remembered for its heritage over those decades, not hundreds of years ago. That is a point that I do not think this Bill addresses head-on.
The Rose & Crown in Aston is another pub that was not going to survive. In that case, residents bought community shares in the pub and it survived, so we have two examples of pubs surviving in my constituency. That is great—the mechanisms are in place, but people need to be willing to come forward and need the funds to do it. To come back to what my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and Solway (Markus Campbell-Savours) said earlier, we need to make sure that when the community has that will, it also has the ability to purchase and run these pubs. That is no mean feat, and it is not simply about legislation; we have to think far more about how we make that possible. I hope the Minister can touch on that issue in her winding-up remarks.
I have given the House examples from Stevenage of why protection of our pubs matters. As has been said by other Members, we already have protections in place, and new ones will come in this year and next through the devolution Act. I encourage other communities to take advantage of those protections, but beyond that, we need to make sure that we are protecting existing pubs and other enterprises.