Philip Davies
Main Page: Philip Davies (Conservative - Shipley) Neighbourhood Planning Bill
Philip Davies ExcerptsTuesday 13th December 2016
(8 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Neighbourhood Planning Act 2017 Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 13 December 2016 - (13 Dec 2016)
Graham Jones
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I could add that we also have planning frameworks and guidance in place for things such as supermarkets, so why not do the same for betting shops? It seems remarkable that we can pick on supermarkets—
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
There are far more pubs and fast-food takeaways per square mile in poorer areas than betting shops. Does the hon. Gentleman also want to restrict them, to protect the people in the poorest communities?
Graham Jones
I presume the hon. Gentleman has done an impact survey and a geographical study of the number of alcoholics and whether they live near pubs and of the number of people who may be obese because they live near takeaways, but he did not offer that information, so I presume that he has no argument and is just trying to make an invalid point. [Interruption.] Caring about this issue is caring about the people who go into these bookmakers and get caught by these FOBTs, because there are clusters and these things are attractive. We also have to look at the impact on the viability of our high streets, on communities and on other retailers.
Graham Jones
The right hon. Gentleman makes my point for me; he shows why this is a modest proposal, as it asks the Secretary of State to make that designation. It is not for the Opposition or for me to prescribe this, but for the Secretary of State to provide that clear guidance to local authorities. I thank the right hon. Gentleman for making his point, because he, along with his Conservative colleagues in government, will be able to decide what the density, impact and clustering should be. I hope that he joins me in the Lobby when this is pressed to a vote.
Philip Davies
As the hon. Gentleman seems so concerned about evidence and facts, can he tell us whether the number of betting shops is going up or down?
Graham Jones
The issue is not whether the number of betting shops is going up or down, but whether ordinary people are affected by the consequences of this product. If there are 1 million smokers now but 999,999 tomorrow, the number is going down, but still, as Philip Morris said this week, this is a disease. No matter whether the number is going down or up, the people who are affected should be our primary concern.
Antoinette Sandbach
I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention. That seems a very strange case indeed. I am aware that councils often do not apply for costs and, when they do, they get only a proportion of their costs back, not their full costs. By tabling the new clause, I hope to give additional powers to rectify that position and to discourage developers from such behaviour.
The Minister will be aware that I have campaigned long on this issue because of the actions of developers in my constituency. I know that there are issues affecting the Cheshire East half of my constituency, which does not have a local plan. Where communities have worked hard and put in place their neighbourhood plans, it is deeply frustrating for them to be put at risk because the methodology for calculating the five-year housing land supply was not correct. It seems ironic that Cheshire East used exactly the same methodology as Cheshire West and Chester, whose five-year land supply was accepted, yet that of Cheshire East was not. I can only assume that that is because there was no build-out of the housing that was described in earlier contributions.
I support new clause 8 because where a defect in the five-year supply is caused by the failure of developers to build out that causes the problem. The council has granted planning permission, but the developments are not being started. For those reasons, I support these new clauses.
Philip Davies
I should say in passing that I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach) on her new clause 2, and with my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) on new clause 7. I particularly agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) on amendment 29. He is absolutely right and he may or may not know that I faced exactly the same situation in Bradford as he did in Sutton Coldfield. The Minister has put a stop on the core strategy plan of Bradford Council, but I hope for a much more favourable outcome from those deliberations than my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield received. I assure my hon. Friend the Minister that I will feel equally aggrieved should the decision be as it was in Birmingham.
I want to speak about new clause 1, and in doing so I should begin by referring people to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. The hon. Member for Hyndburn (Graham Jones) made it clear once again that he is the biggest devotee in the House of Donald Trump. He quoted him, as he usually does, when he referred to fixed odds betting terminals as the “crack cocaine of gambling”. Anybody who knows anything about this subject knows that the term was first used by Donald Trump in the 1980s to refer to video keno games, which he saw as a threat to his casino businesses. Ever since he first used the phrase, any new form of gambling—in fact, every new form of gambling—has been referred to at various times as the “crack cocaine of gambling”. That has included casinos themselves at certain points and lottery scratchcards—name any form of gambling, and I can point to somebody who has called it the crack cocaine of gambling. So, of course, fixed odds betting terminals have been called the same—not because they are considered to be that, but just because the same old phrase is trotted out every time we have a new form of gambling.
Dr Daniel Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)
Will my hon. Friend give way?
Philip Davies
No, I am going to press on. I will take some interventions in a bit, but I will press on, because other people wish to speak.
In his briefing notes on the new clause, the hon. Gentleman said he wanted to deal with the proliferation of betting shops. I know he would not want to mislead the House deliberately, so I will say charitably that he does not understand the meaning of the word proliferation. I will try to help him out. The dictionary defines proliferation as the rapid increase in the number of something. The hon. Gentleman is trying to tell us that we have a proliferation of betting shops. Well, the facts are the exact opposite.
The number of betting shops in the UK peaked in the mid-1970s, at about 16,000, and it has dropped since then. It was 9,128 in 2012. There are 8,709 this year. I suspect—in fact, I can virtually guarantee—that there will be fewer next year and fewer the year after that. There is not a proliferation of betting shops in this country; there is a reduction in the number of betting shops, and that reduction is getting steeper and steeper every year. These firms employ people, including lots of younger people and lots of women. I know that the Labour party no longer cares about working-class people, but when it did, these firms were an essential part of a working-class community.
Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)
Would my hon. Friend prefer the word “clustering”? I know he did when he was an esteemed member of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. In its report of 2012, it recognised the consequences of encouraging the clustering of betting shops and said that it was
“a local problem which calls for a local solution.”
Does new clause 1 not want to empower people to use that local solution?
Philip Davies
No, the new clause is all about being against betting shops. It is a solution looking for a problem.
The reason there is concern about fixed odds betting terminals is a chap called Mr Derek Webb. The hon. Member for Hyndburn knows him very well, but for those who do not know him, he made millions—tens of millions and maybe even hundreds of millions—out of making gambling machines. When the Labour party allowed bookmakers in 2005 to introduce fixed odds betting terminals, Mr Derek Webb was so concerned that he wanted his machines to be installed in betting shops, and the bookmakers turned him down—probably the biggest mistake they have ever made in their business. So he has made it his business ever since to make sure that his machines cannot be in betting shops and people have to go to casinos where they are installed. That is basically what all this is about. It is, in effect, a rich man’s grudge match. He has spent millions trying to get these machines out of betting shops for no other reason than vindictiveness; that is the long and short of it. He set up the Campaign for Fairer Gambling on the back of this issue. He has spent millions. He gave half a million pounds to the Lib Dems in the previous Parliament, trying to buy their support, and he has now started giving a great deal of money to the Labour party in the hope of buying some influence with it.
Graham Jones
What would be the hon. Gentleman’s comments on Channel 4’s exposés on “Dispatches” and on the BBC’s “Panorama” where people just made up fake news?
Philip Davies
That bears no relation to the facts. We all know that people can make a hour-long TV programme and portray anything in any way they want to if they are so determined.
Philip Davies
I am going to press on if my hon. Friend does not mind.
These are the facts, whether people like them or not. The average time that somebody spends on a fixed odds betting terminal is about 10 minutes. Their average loss in that time is about £7. These machines make a profit of about £11 an hour; people may say that that is excessive, but I do not believe it is. The rate of problem gambling in the UK has not altered one jot since fixed odds betting terminals were introduced—it is still about 0.6% of the population, as it was before. The biggest problem-gambling charity in the UK, the Gordon Moody Association, was established in 1971, 30-odd years before fixed odds betting terminals were even introduced in the UK. The idea that we will eliminate problem gambling by getting rid of fixed odds betting terminals is for the birds. People who have a gambling addiction will bet on two flies going up a wall if they get half a chance. The answer is to solve their addiction, not just to ban a particular product in a way that will make not one blind bit of difference.
In this House we have an awful lot of upper-class and middle-class people who like to tell working-class people how they should spend their money and how they should not spend their money.
Graham Jones
I came here from a factory where I was on £10 an hour. I went straight from the factory into Parliament. I am not one of the middle-class or upper-class people the hon. Gentleman is talking about. Unlike him, I am one of the normal working-class people.
Philip Davies
It is a shame that the hon. Gentleman has become so detached from his roots, along with the rest of his party. Perhaps Labour would not be in such a mess if it stuck a bit more closely to its working-class roots.
I was astonished to hear my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) talk about all those people in West Dorset going from payday loan companies into betting shops. It is a while since I have been in West Dorset, but it has clearly changed an awful lot since the last time I was there.
Sir Oliver Letwin
My hon. Friend misunderstood me. My point was that I do not have this problem in leafy West Dorset: the places I have seen people go directly from payday lenders into betting shops are in inner-city areas, where there are people far harder pressed than most, though not all, of my constituents. That is the worry.
Philip Davies
I will be interested to find out about my right hon. Friend’s habit of spending lots of time in inner-city areas where he watches people’s activities going between betting shops and payday lending companies, but we can discuss that later.
Philip Davies
No, I will not.
I did not come into Parliament to ban people from doing all the things that I do not happen to like myself. I think that our duty in this House is to try to protect people’s freedoms, even the freedom to do things that we do not choose to do ourselves. Unfortunately, there are lots of people in this House who do nothing other than try to ban people from doing all the things that they personally do not happen to like themselves. Many people in this House do not like gambling and betting, and want to stop anyone else doing it.
As I made clear in an intervention, there are far more pubs in poorer communities, per square mile, than betting shops. How many Members of this House want to restrict the number of pubs so that poor working-class people do not waste their money down at the pub? None, or hardly any. Why? Because MPs like a drink themselves, and they do not want to ban anybody from doing anything that they happen to like themselves. There are far more takeaway food outlets per square mile in poor working-class areas than there are betting shops. How many Members want to ban all those takeaways? None. Why? Look at everyone—we all like a good takeaway ourselves, and do not want to do ourselves out of it. This is all about people in this House telling other people what they should and should not be doing in a rather patronising way that does not give a very good image of this place. They do not want to stop people doing things that they themselves like doing—only the things that they do not happen to like.
Mr Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)
My hon. Friend is putting a very sincere argument. I know he holds these views sincerely and his integrity is beyond question. I do not want him to ban anything he does not want to ban, but on this occasion I am happy to do it for him.
Philip Davies
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend.
If people are not allowed to bet on a fixed odds betting terminal, the idea that they will all of a sudden not bet at all is for the birds. What will they do? I will tell the House. They will go from the roulette machine in a betting shop, where staff are keeping an eye on them and intervening when they show concerning behaviours and referring them to problem-gambling charities for help, but they will not just stop gambling. They will go on to the internet, and play exactly the same roulette game, but for unlimited stakes and unlimited prizes. Why on earth do people in this House want people to go from a product that has a stake limit and a prize limit, in a place where there are people keeping an eye on them, on to the internet, where there are unlimited stakes and prizes? That is complete nonsense.
Rob Marris
I caution the hon. Gentleman on that point. I do not know what he did, but I remember that when I voted for the ban on smoking in workplaces, one argument put forward by opponents was that people would still continue to consume tobacco, and just do so in a different venue. That is manifestly not the case. The number of people giving up smoking or smoking less has increased very considerably because of that legislation. I am not saying that it is entirely due to the legislation, but the consensus among medical experts is that the legislation has been a major contributory factor in people’s abandoning or lessening personally harmful behaviour.
Philip Davies
The problem with the hon. Gentleman’s argument is that smoking has gone down in this country every single year, without fail, since 1975—every single year, without fail, whether before or after the smoking ban. It was therefore inevitable that after a ban on smoking it would go down, because it would have gone down if there had been no ban. That cause and effect argument does not wash with me, I am afraid. People who bet will go on to the internet.
To give another argument, The Times had an article based on information from the Gambling Commission showing that 16% of under-16s were gambling every week. What were they gambling on? It was not fixed odds betting terminals—they were not going into betting shops. They were gambling on fruit machines, and largely on national lottery scratchcards. People can purchase those scratchcards at 16. They can gamble at 16 on the national lottery.
Who argues against that in this House—who argues against young people getting into gambling at the age of 16 like that? I do. I think it is an absolute outrage that people can play the national lottery at 16. If we believe that gambling should be allowed only at 18, that should be the case for all gambling. But who is arguing against playing the lottery at 16? No one. Even though young people are getting into gambling on scratchcards, people do not complain. That is not because they care about the people losing money; it is because they are concerned about the people winning the money. The money from the lottery goes to good causes, so people think it is fine for others to get an addiction to scratchcards. Although they do not like to say so, and so dress it up by saying they are concerned about problem gamblers, the fact is that what lies behind measures such as the new clause is that people do not like the people who are winning the money. They do not give a stuff about the people who are losing the money. That is the sad thing.
How much did Derek Webb give to problem-gambling charities when he was accumulating his hundreds of millions of pounds? Perhaps he did give some money, but I am not aware of anything. The bookmakers give millions and millions—about £6 million a year—to problem-gambling charities to help people with their treatment, and that would be under threat if we did away with these betting shops.
Fiona Bruce
Is it not correct to say that betting shop managers have an obligation to stop a gambler if they think that that person is gambling irresponsibly, and therefore there is a reason why we should stop the proliferation of betting shops in the same locality?
Philip Davies
The problem with that is something that used to be called competition, which the Conservative party used to be in favour of, many moons ago. I know that it is an old-fashioned view in the Conservative party to believe in competition, but some of us still do. Self-exclusion for people who have a problem now applies across different betting shops. If someone self-excludes in one shop, it will apply in every shop in the locality, so I think my hon. Friend’s concern has been allayed.
The point I want to make before I finish is that if the choice was between having a betting shop in a town centre—in Bradford or in Shipley, for example—or having Marks & Spencer or Next, I would say every single time that the local authority should look to give planning permission to Marks & Spencer or Next, because it would do much more to regenerate the high street in Shipley than another betting shop would. Absolutely—I would be with the hon. Member for Hyndburn, every single day of the week. But the reason why betting shops have gone from the side streets to the main street is that retailers have been abandoning the high street—they have been walking away from it. The choice is now whether we have a betting shop or a closed-down, boarded-up shop down the high street. It is not a choice between a betting shop and a wonderful retailer that will do this, that and the other to the local community; it is often a choice between a betting shop and no shop whatsoever.
I would say that in a local community it is far better to have a betting shop employing people, and looking out for people who are gambling to make sure that they do not bet with a problem, than to have a boarded-up shop, which is the alternative. The Government should be very wary about doing something that will further reduce the number of betting shops when it is already going down, even without any intervention. I hope that the House will support my hon. Friends with their new clauses but reject new clause 1.
Heidi Allen (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)
Members might be relieved to know that I shall be extremely brief. I rise to speak to my amendments 24 and 25, although I should say that there is not a new clause or an amendment that we have heard about today that I disagree with. I thank the many Members on both sides of the House who have supported my amendments.
My hon. Friends will know that I am a passionate champion of the vulnerable. I have often spoken about disability and social care issues, and today is no exception. I doubt that anyone in the House would disagree that safe, secure, affordable and appropriate housing is a basic requirement for everyone. I also doubt that many would disagree that we face an unprecedented housing challenge. When the supply of housing is tight, some in society must make do with seriously inappropriate housing. I am pleased to report that 90% of all new housing developments in London must meet building standards category 2, which concerns accessible standards, and that the remaining 10% must be totally wheelchair-friendly. That is fantastic and exactly as it should be, but no similar requirement applies outside London.
My amendments would require local planning authorities to consider the needs of elderly and disabled people when identifying strategic priorities for the development and use of land. They would support the national policy guidance on new developments outlined in the national planning policy framework. They would also, by enabling independent living, support the Government’s commitment to halving the disability employment gap. Furthermore, they would reduce pressure on the social care sector and the NHS by providing more suitable accommodation for elderly people and keeping them safe in their homes for longer. In itself, achieving that is one of the biggest challenges that this country faces, and we have talked an awful lot about it recently.
The Government are tackling the housing challenge head-on. I look forward to the imminent White Paper, but as we rise to this challenge, we must not inadvertently replace it with a different kind of challenge by failing to recognise the need for accessible housing. My amendments purely seek to safeguard against that.
With an ageing population and more people living longer, with complex needs, the demand for accessible homes is set to increase rapidly. By 2030, the number of people aged 65 and over will have increased by 50%. In the next 20 years, the number of disabled people is set to increase from 11 million to 15 million. Estimates —conservative estimates at that—show that 3 million more accessible homes will be needed by 2035. Today, we have 11.9 million disabled people in the UK, yet only 6% of the housing stock currently provides the four bare-minimum standards needed to allow a disabled person to visit, let alone live there. The number of people aged 85 and over is expected to double in the next 23 years to more than 3.4 million.
Older people should be able to live safely and with dignity in good-quality, warm and safe housing. We know that most older people want to retain their independence and to stay in their homes for as long as possible. Not only should we actively support that, but if we want to tackle the crisis in social care—it is a crisis—we must do so. The cost of hospitalisation and social care for older people, such as those who have suffered hip fractures, most of which are caused by falls but could be prevented if there was more suitable housing, is £2 billion a year.
Sir Nicholas Soames
I have been bullied by the Whips into making only a very short intervention, so I am not able to expand on the extensive views that I wished to favour the House with. However, I thought that I should not let the moment pass without my thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) for his immensely touching description of betting shops, which, as we all know, are havens of peace, tranquillity, excitement and—
Sir Nicholas Soames
Yes, virtue. They are great places to be, and they make a tremendous and important contribution to the money-lending business. I say to my hon. Friend that he was extremely patronising about my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) who, like myself, has probably spent many, many happy hours in gambling shops, as my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley knows I have. I have nothing but the very highest opinion of them. My hon. Friend gave us a particularly touching exposition and I hope the House will pay no attention to it.
I thank my hon. Friend the Housing and Planning Minister for his courtesy, kindness and consideration, and for the immense efforts he makes on behalf of all of us to try to ensure that we have a fair planning system in this country.
I, of course, support amendment 28, which was tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for the imperial town of Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell). I am delighted that he will not pressing it to a Division, but I am completely on his side and thought he made a powerful case. The decision that his constituents have had to cope with is certainly very unpleasant.
I am really speaking to support my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), who is my close friend and parliamentary neighbour. He and I are currently struggling as Mid Sussex District Council is undergoing an examination in public. As my hon. Friend the Minister knows, Mid Sussex has made 14 parish and town council plans, which is something of a record. That is an extraordinary achievement. The local communities have worked immensely hard, with great credibility and integrity, only to find that all their efforts are constantly undermined and challenged by the most unscrupulous building lobby it has ever been my pleasure to have to deal with.
At the examination in public, at which my right hon. Friend and I appeared on the second day, I was astonished to see the range of what the builders produced. They had bogus development forums that had been rushed together to try to present them as reputable. Their lobbying is aggressive and, in my view, totally unacceptable. Even our local enterprise partnership is chaired by a builder. They seek to interfere, very unhelpfully, in the work of the planning authorities.
My hon. Friend the Minister knows of the infamous application by Mayfield Market Towns to build a completely unwanted new settlement to the south of my constituency and partially in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs. It has been turned down time after time. No one wants it and it is not in any plan, yet the builders continue to chip away at the fabric, integrity and credibility of the plans.
In supporting the very sound and sensible new clauses tabled by my right hon. Friend, all I wish to say to the Minister is that I hope he understands that councils such as Mid Sussex are fighting a losing battle. There need to be clear rules and a clear understanding that there is a spirit that is entered into, because at the moment the house builders act quite outside the spirit and intention of the law. As my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach) said in her excellent speech, it is quite unacceptable that all this hard work is undone by some completely unacceptable lobbying.
Dr Blackman-Woods
We are not against a change of use for a pub; we are against the fact that that change goes through permitted development, taking away local people’s right to have a say over what happens to the pub. The new clause is designed to remove those changes from permitted development and put them back into the planning system, which is exactly where they should be.
Dr Blackman-Woods
I will give way very briefly to the hon. Gentleman; he spoke for a long time earlier.
Philip Davies
I am very sympathetic to pubs, and always voted on what we might call the pub side of the argument, including over the tenancy issue—the tied pubs issue—during the previous Parliament. I am concerned that if we say to a struggling pub that it has to get planning permission, the bank might pull the plug on it much more quickly, because there will be no guarantee that the bank will be able to get its money back—as it can at the moment—if it keeps lending the pub money. I wonder what the hon. Lady makes of the idea that the proposal could be inadvertently counterproductive for pubs that are struggling.
Dr Blackman-Woods
When we are considering the future of a pub, it is really important that the local community has a say in that. In the totality of the scheme, it is rarely the case that the cost of a planning application will make the whole scheme viable or unviable in the long term.
I want to speak briefly to new clause 10, which is designed to press the Minister when it comes to ensuring that planning departments are adequately resourced, not only to undertake their current work but to deal with any new burdens that the Minister places on them. I will leave it there, to allow the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland) to come in on new clause 9.
Philip Davies
I do not intend to trouble the House for long, but I want to focus on new clause 9. I am pleased that the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland) is in his place, and I pay tribute to him for the work that he has done over many years to support pubs. Just to show that I do not want to ban things that I do not do myself, I remind the House that I do not drink. I am a teetotaller, but I still believe in pubs and their importance in the local community, and in people’s freedom to do as they please.
The hon. Gentleman has done a fantastic job of supporting the pub industry. As I made clear in my intervention, during the previous Parliament I voted on the side of pubs on the question of whether they should be tied. I felt that too many pubs were tied to unfair conditions that affected their viability, and I was pleased that the Government lost that vote. My instinct is to want to support the hon. Gentleman’s new clause 9, because I support pubs and the work that he does.
I will not blame the hon. Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods), who is very impressive, but I clearly did not explain myself very well when I raised my concern. It was not her lack of understanding; it was clearly the fault of my explanation. I apologise for putting her in the difficult position of trying to make sense of something that did not make any sense at all.
I would be very pleased to hear how the hon. Member for Leeds North West can address my concern about new clause 9. If a struggling pub needs support from the bank to keep it going and the bank knows that the site of the closed pub can easily be changed to an alternative use without going through a bureaucratic planning process that may end up with the plans being rejected, my fear is that the bank—it knows that if all goes wrong, it can get its money back by changing the pub’s use or building something else on the site—will pull the plug on the pub much earlier in the process, instead of investing more money in the pub to help it to keep going and to turn it around. The bank might think, “If this goes on, we’re not going to get our money back. If we can’t get planning permission on this land, we’ll be left with a debt we’re never going to be able to recover. We do not want to get ourselves into that mess in the first place, so we will pull the plug on the pub.”
Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)
I thank the hon. Gentleman, who is my constituency neighbour, for making that point—I also thank him for his support on pub issues in the past—but his concerns are entirely misplaced. I may not have the time to convince him of that today. The reality is that profitable pubs are being closed up and down the country, but that is nothing to do with the banks. No one is saying that, when a pub is not viable and no one wants to buy it to run it as a pub, it should not be given planning permission. However, because of these absurd loopholes at the moment, people are deliberately targeting profitable pubs because they will make a good supermarket. Surely as someone who believes in localism, he cannot support that.
Philip Davies
The hon. Gentleman makes a very good case, although as someone who worked for a supermarket chain for 13 years, I am not sure that was the best example he could have given to try to persuade me. I take on board his point, which is a good one.
I will not go on for much longer, because I want to listen to what other Members have to say. I am genuinely in a difficult position because I can see both sides of the argument. I will, however, reiterate my fear about a new clause that has the best of intentions. It aims to do what I think we would all want, which is to help the pubs sector to flourish. Pubs are important to our local communities, and I am all for them. In some instances—perhaps not in every instance, and perhaps not even in the majority of instances—new clause 9 may have the unintended consequence of leading to the closure of pubs much sooner and much more often than would otherwise be the case.
I will listen to the cases that other Members make. I will do a rare thing in this House: I will listen to the debate before deciding how to vote.
Greg Mulholland
I thank my colleagues on the save the pub all-party group, particularly the hon. Members for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) and for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh), who are vice-chairs of it. I thank the hon. Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods) for very kindly opening the debate for me. I apologise to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to the House for not being present at that time, but I was wandering over to the Chamber expecting a vote and suddenly saw that the debate on new clause 9 had begun. I also thank the hon. Lady and her colleagues for their consistent support on this issue. Above all, I thank the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach) for having the courage to add her name to the new clause. She will be toasted by many groups around the country.
I thank Protect Pubs for its excellent campaigning. It is now the leading organisation in the country for standing up for and protecting our pubs. I also thank the British Pub Confederation, which represents 14 pub sector organisations in the UK. I declare an interest as I am its chair.
Today we are campaigning on exactly the same issue that the hon. Lady’s colleague and great friend of pubs, the hon. Member for Bristol North West (Charlotte Leslie), set out in an amendment in February 2015 as vice-chair of the save the pub group. Too many pubs are still closing. The statistics go up and down slightly, but in excess of 20 pubs are closing a week.
The hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) has missed the point. The new clause is not about stopping pubs that are not viable from being converted into other things. Pubs are being converted into other things all the time. Some pubs might be unviable, but a considerable number of them are viable and profitable. Unfortunately, they are closing because of permitted development rights. Surely it cannot be right that a wanted, profitable business can be closed without local people having any say.
I will not go into the detail, because I know there is limited time, but I think that people are aware of the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) Order 1995, which allows people to turn pubs into shops, supermarkets and offices, or to demolish them, without planning permission. May I ask how long I have to speak, Madam Deputy Speaker?