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Business of the House

The Deputy Leader of the House will no doubt be aware of the deeply worrying statistic that 36 pubs in this country are closing every week. Clearly that is bad news not only for those small businesses, but for the communities in which they are based. Bang on cue, the Department of Health has produced a new consultation that threatens considerably to add to the regulation on pubs and brewing companies, causing the chief executive of Shepherd Neame, a family brewer in my constituency, to write to me to say: "This will increase costs on responsible operators at a time when they can ill afford it and at a time when the Government is still apparently considering implementing the punitive rate of duty in the duty accelerator." Can we have a debate on the future of the pub industry because of the effect not only on small businesses, but on the small communities in which they are situated?