Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 26 November 2020
We are having this debate against a backdrop of the most severe crisis ever to have faced our hospitality sector. Pubs are on their knees. In many parts of the country—including my own—people cannot even go to one if they wanted to and, when pubs are allowed to reopen, many people will not want to. For those of us who like the occasional pint and who like the variety that we have in the sector in this country, it is deeply depressing.
The bill was introduced in better times, but even then, pubs were struggling. I wonder whether Neil Bibby would have introduced the bill today. It is a well-meaning bill; there is no doubt about that. It follows the legislation in 2015 in England and Wales to create a pubs code and an adjudicator that would govern the relationships between some tied pub tenants and their pub-owning company landlords.
The Tied Pubs (Scotland) Bill aims to ensure that Scottish tied pub tenants have at least the same protections and opportunities as those covered by the 2015 act in England and Wales. It would seem that all that is fair enough, except that the tied pubs sector in Scotland is nowhere near the size of the sector in England—it is 17 per cent—so if there is a problem, it is a small one.
I commend the committee for its work on the bill. It has come up with a pretty fair summary of it in its report:
“The Bill will ensure that tied tenants have the option to request a ‘market-rent-only’ (MRO) lease. This means that a tenant can pay the going market rate to rent the pub without having to buy products or services from the pub-owning business, therefore ending the tied relationship. Even if a tenant remains tied, the Bill provides an opportunity to sell at least one ‘guest beer’. They will not be restricted to only selling the brands permitted by the pub-owning business.”
The bill has only got people excited recently—as we have headed towards this debate, really—if my inbox is anything to go by. It is finely balanced; it is not cut and dried. We can argue this either way. As the committee said in its report,
“Views on the Bill are polarised. Those who support the Bill argue that there is an urgent need for legislation to rebalance the risk and reward in tied tenancies. They believe that the pub-owning companies take too large a share of profits meaning that tenants struggle with low incomes ... Opponents think that there is no need for legislation and believe that the tied tenancy model already works well. Not only do they believe that legislation is unnecessary, they think it would actively damage the pub sector in Scotland. Those who oppose the Bill argue that it would harm investment in the sector and force pub-owning businesses to manage pubs themselves or sell them.”
That latter point was made quite forcefully as we headed towards the stage 1 debate. It was no surprise to me that the committee was divided on the bill because, as I said, it is not cut and dried. The comments of Neil Bibby when the committee report came out were not helpful. He said:
“The SNP-Tory majority on this Committee got it wrong. Their report flies in the face of the evidence placed before them.”
He went on:
“SNP and Tory MSPs have sided with big multinationals who are extracting profit from small businesses who need our support.”
Those comments were slightly insulting to members, who have sided with no one and who were wrestling with pretty serious issues. If the bill progresses to stage 2, the committee will have a big job to do, and I have every confidence that the committee will get it right.
18:10