On Tuesday, Richard Drax, MP for South Dorset, voted against a new cross-party clause to the Small Business Bill which offered new protections for local publicans against the predatory practices of large pub owning companies (known as pubcos) and opposing plans to give local pubs and landlords a fairer deal.
Following a report into the industry by the cross-party BIS Select Committee in 2010, Labour has campaigned alongside a broad coalition of groups in the industry – including the Federation of Small Businesses, the Forum of Private Business, CAMRA, FairPint and the GMB and UNITE trade unions – to call for greater protection for local pubs and put a stop to unfair treatment and restrictive practices by pubcos.
The government had offered provisions to regulate pubcos in the Small Business Bill, debated in Parliament this week, but these fell some way short of Labour’s plans and campaigners’ demands. Labour therefore supported a cross-party clause to strengthen the Bill.
However, despite several of his Tory colleagues defying their party whip to vote for this new clause, local MP Richard Drax voted against it.
Simon Bowkett, Labour’s Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for South Dorset for next May’s General Election said:
“In the past, Richard Drax has been more than happy to be portrayed as a champion of the pub trade, but he had the opportunity to vote for new measures which would help support local landlords, and instead chose to stand up for the large pub companies and to allow them to continue to exploit their local pub tenants.”
“27 pubs close every week and 57% of landlords who are tied to a large pubco earn less than £10,000 a year. These are scandals which must be addressed, and so I was proud that Labour MPs voted to make this important change. If I am elected in May, people in South Dorset can be assured that I will always support local pubs with deeds as well as words.”
Toby Perkins MP, Labour’s Shadow Pubs Minister said:
“Labour has led calls for a proper statutory code with teeth on pub companies, giving tenants the protection they need and putting an end to the unfair treatment they’ve received from large pub companies. Our plans have won support from a broad coalition of campaigners including CAMRA, the Federation of Small Business, trade unions and the cross-party BIS Select Committee.
“Over the past three years ministers have been dragged kicking and screaming every step of the way on this issue, and now they have been dealt a resounding and humiliating defeat in the House of Commons. Ministers must now act immediately to ensure there is a proper statutory code with a free-of-tie option to protect local pubs, and must not ignore the will of the House of Commons, after their desperate and shambolic attempts to stave off defeat have failed.”
More info:
· New Clause 2 was passed by 284 votes to 269 at 4pm on 18/11/2014 despite the government whipping against it. It delivers a mandatory free of tie option (also known as the market rent only, or MRO, option) which allows publicans to buy their beer on the open market. The BIS Select Committee concluded that this was the only way to ensure that landlords would be no worse off than if they were free-of-tie as it would force pubcos to offer tied tenants the best deals.
· The government’s own response to a consultation on a statutory code, printed in June, concluded that a mandatory free of tie option: “is popular with many tenant groups and might arguably offer the simplest way of ensuring a tied tenant is no worse off than a free of tie tenant” – but for reasons known only to themselves they decided not to pursue this.
· Under the original Bill, licencees would merely have the right to ask their pub company to show them how much their rent would be under a free of tie scheme. This was problematic as all the information would be held by the pubcos, all the calculations crunched by their accountants and all the final estimates would be made by them – and then even if they revealed that the landlord would be better of free-of-tie they would have had no legal right to demand this option.
