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Pub Companies

I echo my earlier comments commending the Select Committee on its excellent work. The all-party save the pub group has been delighted to work with the Committee and support its work. I am disappointed that we have to have this debate. As has already been made clear, in the past 18 months we received unanimous, cast-iron commitments from Front-Bench spokesmen of all three main parties that, if self-regulation failed by June 2011, a statutory code of practice would be introduced, including the all-important genuine free-of-tie option. If people ask why this should be reviewed in the autumn, the simple answer is that it has been going on for seven years and generated four Select Committee reports. The last attempt at self-regulation was supposed to be the final one, which makes the Government's response even more baffling. The sad reality is that their response simply does not deal with the fundamental issue, which is that the big pub companies take too much from each pub and it makes it difficult or impossible for those licensees to make a living, and that also shuts pubs. The Government's response does nothing whatsoever to address that. I am afraid that the Government have also been sold a pup. The immediate improvements outlined in their response are illusory. First, there are no substantive changes in the new framework code of practice produced by the British Beer and Pub Association. Secondly, and even more worryingly, the whole idea of putting the new codes on a legal footing is a mirage. The BBPA's own legal advice—let us all be clear that it is the representative organisation of the pub companies—based on a legal authority that goes back 100 years, the Carlill case, has made it clear that, if we are to rely on that case, those codes are already binding. A letter was sent to pubco lessees over Christmas that worried them considerably. It suggested that the 2010 company code of practice would become binding if they sought to use it in any case, which is clearly an offer to ensnare them in further obligations to their landlords not already covered in the lease. The first question to the Minister is this: how on earth can anyone be seeking to put on a legal footing codes that he himself has said are inadequate? He has written to the Select Committee Chair, stating:"““In some case, primarily where the letter was sent in advance of the new code being agreed, the link to the industry Framework Code led to the former version rather than the enhanced version, of the code; however, this will be superseded by the new version of the code once it has been agreed.””" The simple problem is this: which code and which offer? There are so many codes floating around, it is an absolute mess. The Minister needs to know that many licensee organisations believe that the Government, accepting the advice of the BBPA that it is a good idea to make the codes legally binding, will actually make the situation worse for licensees, not better.