Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill

Sheryll Murray Excerpts

Wednesday 16th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)]

My constituency was built on small businesses and the ingenuity of those who run them, but I must express some concerns that I discussed with one of my constituents, James Staughton, who owns St Austell brewery, when he invited me to a dinner recently. St Austell brewery has about 170 pubs, and although I welcome the protections afforded in the Bill to hard-working pub tenants, I wish to mention the concerns that James raised.

Smaller organisations would find it more difficult to operate under a new statutory code. There is little doubt that gaming machines are an important revenue source, and not to allow smaller companies that important revenue stream would simply put costs elsewhere—the last thing we want is a rise in rent that those hard-working tenants have to compensate for. Having the fixed cost of a compliance officer is unfair on smaller companies that have a much smaller base to cover the additional burden. The same can be said of the necessity to have a valuer qualified by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors to sign-off rent assessments and a number of other compliance requirements.

It is clear to me that the small businesses that run fewer than 500 pubs need to be excluded from most, if not all, these regulatory changes. After all, I fought the last election on removing Labour’s red tape not adding to it, and I remind the Secretary of State—unfortunately he is not in his place—of his words:

“In order to place the most proportionate burden on business, the Government is proposing that this new regulatory regime should apply to all pub companies with more than 500 pubs.”

There was no mention of these measures applying to smaller pub companies.

Further concerns are short-term agreements and tenancies-at-will, which are often used to assist when a business is in crisis. Because of the short-term nature of those tenancies, I ask the Government to consider the regulations carefully, as short-term emergency measures, by their very nature, need more flexibility than longer-term tenancies. Tied pubs are a tradition. A tenant should not be able to come in and change all the beers, losing the landlord much of the revenue and possibly changing the whole nature of the pub—which, if successful, will go through many tenants in the period of its life.

I welcome the Bill, but I want to ensure that we have got it right. I want to save the British pub, not punish it.