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Pub Companies

Pubs are a significant feature in all our constituencies. In Eastbourne, when people ask where I live, I say, ““Just up the road from the Lamb””, and everyone knows where I mean. That is just a small way of illustrating how valuable pubs are across the UK. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey) for securing this debate, and to my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland), who has been leading on this issue for a number of years. Before becoming an MP, I had observed over the past 10 years or so a rapid decrease in the number of pubs. Since coming to the House, I have received representations from publicans and constituents in Eastbourne, and I have carried out some research. Much of what I was going to say has already been said, and I shall not repeat it, but I want to mention some research by the Institute for Public Policy Research. My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West and many others today have expressed with passion the fact that we have visited this issue on numerous occasions, under the previous Government and this one. The same issue keeps coming up, and the Select Committee keeps working away at it, focusing on what needs to be done. The Government of the day listen, say that they will do something about it, and then do nothing. The reason that we have to keep coming back to it is that the major players behave deplorably; there is no other way of putting it. The more I researched the matter over the past few months, having spoken to my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West, the more I kept asking myself, ““What is going on? What other industry would keep saying that it was going to do something, yet keep breaking its word?”” Then I thought, ““I've got it! It's investment banking!”” I am very much a business-wing Liberal, and, like my hon. Friend the Member for Pendle (Andrew Stephenson), who is not in his place, a great believer in light-touch regulation. There are exceptions to every rule, however. I do not like light-touch regulation for investment banks, because that is what got us into the mess we are now in. Nor do I think that the argument not to regulate the pubcos stacks up.