It is a real pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bristol North West (Charlotte Leslie). We certainly welcomed her application for this debate at the Backbench Business Committee. I am really glad that the environment is calmer today than it was two weeks ago when we last debated this matter. I am sorry that her amendment was defeated so narrowly, but it did demonstrate the strength of feeling across the House. As she says, pubs are not just buildings where alcohol is sold, but community hubs where people meet, relax and socialise. Pubs have done a lot to ensure that they reach out to their communities. They are now a place for, among other things, knitting circles and salsa dancing. It is unbelievable what happens in pubs today.
As the hon. Lady says, about 30 pubs a weeks are closing. It is often the case that they are closing because they are not used or because the demographic has changed. Everybody supports the idea that they should not be boarded up but used for something else. Her suggestion, and what the Opposition have been calling for, is perfectly sensible. We should give local communities a say in what happens to their pub, in the way that they would if it were a nightclub, a theatre, or, as the Library briefing says, a scrapyard. Local communities would get a say in the change of use from a scrapyard to a supermarket, so why not a pub?
The hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) raised an important point. Many pubs are heavily used. This is about not whether a pub is used, but whether the brewery, the pubco, or the property developing company that owns these pubs as assets can make more money out of them by selling them to supermarkets or by using them as pubs. That is the key issue that I want to get across today.
I am involved in a campaign in New Whittington, in North East Derbyshire, where the Wellington pub is, at this very moment, under threat of being turned into a supermarket. I just wanted to talk a little about what happens when a pub applies to be an asset of community value. It is not straightforward as the Government would have us believe. We helped to get asset of community value status for another pub, The Angel at Spinkhill, and it was incredibly stressful. Spinkhill is tiny and New Whittington is not much bigger. People love going to their pub, but unlike many of the property developing companies and pubcos they do not have the time, money or power to navigate a complex system to get that status, which only protects the pub from being sold for six months, giving the local community a chance to buy it and to run it as a co-op or as a community facility. That is not necessarily what they want to do. They want to have a pub, but running it themselves is quite a big ask and, especially in deprived communities in which those pubs are the only asset, that can be a serious issue.