My Lords, I have only a few points to make on these matters as the issues have already been covered quite well. However, I want to stress that these are highly important to our consideration of the Bill and we will look closely at the evolution of the Government’s thinking on them. We stand ready to work with the Government on these amendments and are content to move forward with them in the Bill, on the basis of there being discussion at a later time. However, we would be very concerned if there were no further changes.
We are concerned with how the thresholds are framed. We accept that the Government are focused on the pub-owning companies and we are highly supportive of that. We do not like the formulation that uses the phrase “tied pubs”. We believe there is an overwhelming case to use the terms we proposed—“tenanted” and “leased”—and we would like to see these in the Bill. We have some sympathy with the Government’s predicament on getting these definitions right, but we hope they are willing to show some flexibility on it. There is considerable concern that the situation can be gamed and that the provision of a power to the Secretary of State to vary the number of 500, and to grant exclusions, could be a serious and significant weakening of the Bill or a measure to ensure that anti-avoidance measures can be made more effective.
It is very important that there is a much clearer statement about what the dual-purpose clauses are and that what we put in the Bill is consistent with the work of the other place. It would be very useful if the Minister could give us much greater reassurance on that.