In this grouping, my Amendment 69A is the next one that is not a government amendment, so if it is convenient for the Committee I will speak to that and try not to delay the Committee too long with comments on the amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson. If I then have comments after the Minister has spoken, I am sure she will be willing to accept them.
I want to put on record that it is great shame that the Government have somewhat changed what was agreed in the House of Commons. I see the government amendments, and those of the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, as putting the whole issue into the long grass, which is very sad. Rather than having the MRO option in primary legislation, which I thought was excellent—although obviously there is detail that we need to talk about—we could be left for many years with people opposing any secondary legislation that comes in and then debating it at that stage. Who knows what will happen then?
Amendment 69A is a probing amendment about why the Government, or the House of Commons, chose a maximum of 100 pubs rather than 500 pubs. I have had some useful discussions with St Austell brewery in Cornwall, which comes somewhere in-between. I have also talked to many of its tenants and others, and many who I talked to would be pleased to be able to renegotiate under the MRO. The family brewers, including St Austell, believe that they provide a much better and friendlier quality of ownership than the very big ones. I suspect that they are right in that.
4.45 pm
However, assuming that this goes through in a sensible way and roughly as the House of Commons left it, I do not see why should there be a lower limit at all. Many pubs now brew their own beer and they are clearly economic, otherwise they would not be doing it. We are going to get into a knot on this figure, whatever it is. Of course 10, 20 or 30 different companies could be formed out of the main holding company. Tied pubs could be owned by 20, 30 or 40 of those companies to get under the figure of 500. It is a completely arbitrary figure. If we are going down the route, as I certainly hope, of allowing tenants to renegotiate, at the end of the day it will be a commercial negotiation between them and their owners, and they will both have to be satisfied with the outcome. This issue came up on one of the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, which I shall come to in a minute.
I do not really see why there should be any number at all if the owning company is any good—that is, if it allows its tenants and itself to make money and provides a good service. I would be glad if the Minister could explain why it is so important to have a number of 500 and how anyone could stop any brewery in future from dividing its ownership up into as many companies as it takes to get under the limit. Basically, they would try to buck the system that way. This comment also applies to Amendment 80, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, because there he is trying to remove the provision concerning,
“when a large pub-owning business”,
changes title. As I have said, it can do that or go into liquidation at any time. That is a reason not for exempting them but for keeping that part of the clause in the Bill. The same comment applies to the noble Lord’s Amendment 82.