Pubs and Planning Legislation

Debate between Stephen Williams and Natascha Engel

Thursday 12th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Williams]

I accept what my hon. Friend says about supermarkets, and I assure him I am going to come to that point. The change that he wants and the motion suggests is not modest, however. It is quite a big change to the planning system to give blanket protection to one particular retail use of a piece of land.

Let me depart slightly from my remarks, as I have been provoked. There are probably lots of high street retail uses that different Members around the House might lament the loss of, as shopping areas have changed during our lifetime. I like going to pubs—I have even been to the pub with my hon. Friend several times and hopefully he will buy me a drink again very soon because we have not fallen out too much over this issue—but I am a bibliophile and really enjoy going to bookshops, and I lament the fact that many towns have lost all their bookshops. Even a seat with well-educated constituents such as mine, Bristol West, where there are lots of book- readers has experienced this; the number of bookshops open and trading in Bristol since I went there as a student in 1985 has shrunk markedly in recent years. Is the reason for that because there is not enough protection? The Opposition Whip, the hon. Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones), was chair of the Labour club and I was chairman of the SDP-Liberal club at Bristol university at the time, and she will remember that there were lots of bookshops. There are not so many now.

Has that change happened because there is no protection in the planning system for bookshops—or for bakeries, or for other uses people value in the high street and wish were still there? No, it has not. It has happened because customer tastes and purchasing patterns change. We cannot have a planning permission that stands in the way of people changing how they buy things and exercising their commercial choices.

[Natascha Engel]

That is not the point we are making. All of us have said pubs that are no longer viable are very different from pubs that are perfectly viable. The Wellington in New Whittington is a heavily used pub, but the company that owns the building can make more money by selling it to a supermarket than by keeping it as a pub. It is still making money, however; it is making plenty of profit.

[Stephen Williams]

It is, perhaps, difficult to pick on individual examples without getting into trouble, but one of the bookshops in my constituency closed because a well-known TV personality restaurant-owner paid more for the renewal of the lease than it could afford even though it was trading profitably as a bookshop. Now there is a much-shrunken version of it further down the road. We cannot have a planning system to protect every single piece of economic use of land in towns and cities in that way. We have to reflect the fact that commercial patterns change. That is what our constituents are doing; they are changing the way they buy books, and the way they drink and eat.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Stephen Williams and Natascha Engel

Monday 25th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Williams]

I would expect every local plan, whether in Greenwich, Bristol or elsewhere, to take local needs into account. Yes, changes might well be needed in housing stock as a result of welfare reform changes, but we all know that there is a shortage of one-bedroom and two-bedroom properties as a result of our ageing society and of more people living on their own. That shortage needs to be met right across society.

[Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)]

16. How many planning applications opposed by local authorities and local communities have been approved on appeal since the coming into force of the Localism Act 2011.

Voting Age

Debate between Stephen Williams and Natascha Engel

Thursday 24th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Williams]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. He was the first Member to attempt to make this change—in, I believe, 1999, when he was crushed by 400 votes to 36. I hope we will have a markedly different result today. He is right that this generation of young people have had all the educational opportunities to understand the democratic system, yet we continue to withhold from them the opportunity to put that knowledge into practice. We should not continue to withhold the vote from the best-educated generation of young people.

[Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)]

Before the hon. Gentleman moves on, one important point to make—I want to make it before the hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin) leaves the Chamber, because it relates to a point he made—is on under-18s dying when they go to war. Surely decisions on who goes to war and when affect 16, 17 and 18-year-olds. If they can die for their country, surely they should be able to participate in making the decision on whether their country, for which they are dying, goes to war in the first place.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Stephen Williams and Natascha Engel

Monday 18th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Natascha Engel]

I have it on good authority that I should be very pessimistic about the Liberal Democrats joining us in the Aye Lobby tonight, but they would be very welcome to do so.

[Stephen Williams (Bristol West) (LD)]

I think that the hon. Lady was one of the sponsors of my Bill in the previous Parliament to reduce the voting age to 16, which was defeated by just eight votes. I suspect that there is now a majority in the House to achieve that historic change, but we cannot do that in this Bill. A much wider debate is needed to tease out all the issues. Does she agree that another private Member’s Bill is the way forward?

[Natascha Engel]

Oh no! I am a great fan of private Members’ Bills, and I do not want to do them down, but this Bill, rather than just a private Member’s Bill, is a really good opportunity to change the law.