Pubs and Planning Legislation

Debate between Robert Neill and Natascha Engel

Thursday 12th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

I shall be comparatively brief.

I wish to be a little more generous to the Minister than some speakers. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Charlotte Leslie) on having secured this debate and the Backbench Business Committee on having supported it. Having been both pubs Minister and planning Minister, I am conscious that planning policy is always a balance, and striking a balance does not always make us popular—sometimes, we are about as popular as the landlord calling time on a crowded Saturday night—but it has to be done. I am therefore much more supportive of the Minister’s position.

That does not mean that, in the light of experience, planning policy cannot be improved, and I think that the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland) has made some sensible suggestions that we ought to listen to, as too has my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West. I was also impressed by the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris). In particular, I join in her tribute to Councillor Ray Howard, whom I have worked with over many years. He is rightly nicknamed Mr Canvey, and after almost 40 years of elected service, he now epitomises everything that good local government is about. I am happy to get that on the record.

I believe in pubs. I have been active in a campaign to save a pub in my constituency, and we succeeded within the current regime. There are hurdles, but they are not impossible. Equally, however, those of us who believe in pubs have to be realistic and accept that not every pub is viable or will be an ACV, so we have to take a nuanced approach. I approach this matter slightly differently from my hon. Friends. I am concerned that more pubs are not listed, but I think we should be looking at why we cannot encourage greater uptake of the ACV regime. As one of the Ministers who introduced the regime, I confess I had hoped that communities and local authorities would be more proactive in listing not just pubs but many other types of facility. That is something not just for the Government, but for communities themselves, to look at. In the case of my pub, The Porcupine in Mottingham, ACV status was achieved very quickly.

[Natascha Engel]

Surely the reason local communities are not better at listing these assets is that it is so difficult to do, not that they are too lazy.

[Robert Neill]

I do not think that local communities are necessarily lazy. That would be a patronising thing to say about any community. In Mottingham, the community moved swiftly and efficiently, the local authority co-operated and the pub was listed as an ACV very quickly. I do not accept all the criticisms made of the Government’s position.