Enterprise Bill [HL]
Debate between Lord Whitty and Lord Snape(9 years, 1 month ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Lord Whitty
The noble Baroness played an effective defensive game on a very sticky wicket with a fair amount of hostile bowling. However, I do not think that she actually scored any runs. She is in a difficult position, as we all recognise. The fact of the matter is that she has clearly admitted that there has been a change of policy. As far as I can see from her responses to the various questions from my colleagues, that change of policy was not conveyed to the participants in this industry. In effect, it changes the legislation, which certainly was not communicated to us as legislators. That is a failure on behalf not of the Minister but of the department. We are therefore faced with a rather difficult situation regarding this issue between now and Report on this new Bill.
In terms of my two amendments which relate to the threshold, yes, we have discussed this at great length before but I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, or the noble Baroness. I put them down so that we could look at this again but they were at that point probing amendments. The real issue before us is the nature of the consultation document and the degree to which it differs from what our understanding was prior to the election—in this Committee, in this House on Report and in the House of Commons—and from the position that is reflected in the current legislation and the understanding of most of the parties in this industry.
The central issue here is not the economic state of the industry. We all deplore what faces most pubs. There are one or two pubs that I would not mind closing but I would prefer most pubs to stay open. Irrespective of the state of the industry, there is an imbalance between the individual tenant and a large brewer or pub chain organisation. This legislation was designed to redress that imbalance. Whatever view we may take, the MRO was seen as one way of redressing it. We would see the PRA and the MRO not as alternatives; they are complementary. However, what has happened with the consultation paper is that the triggers for the MRO have been limited, as has the availability of the PRA to those who might not necessarily want to go for the MRO but need to understand how the situation with their rent arrangements would compare with going for an MRO. It would therefore inform their discussions and relationships with their landlord.
That is fairly straightforward but we have limited the triggers and dropped entirely the provision for any tenant to get hold of that comparative information. That is a restriction on where we were under the previous Bill. It is a restriction on the discussions that we had just before the election involving all aspects of the industry to try to reach consensus. I understand why people feel betrayed. It is an emotive thing when people feel that the Government have not played straight with them.
Lord Snape
Is the position not even worse? How is a tenant able to request a rent review under MRO without a rent increase? Is it not presupposed under the Government’s proposed legislation that all current rents to tenants are fair and that only if they are increased can a tenant make this application under MRO? Am I right in thinking that? I asked the Minister but she did not give me a straight answer. Perhaps my noble friend can help me.
Lord Whitty
As I understand it, some of the triggers that were outlined by the Minister at the previous stage were dropped. Triggers remain if there is a rent increase, or if the price of the supplied tied goods goes up beyond a certain level. There are now therefore only two triggers, whereas we previously had four or five. If you add to that the drop in the PRA, then access to information by tenants of all sorts has been seriously limited.