Greg Mulholland calls on coalition government to show its "pro-pub" credentials

Addressing attendees at a reception hosted by the All-Party Parliamentary Beer Group during the Liberal Democrat party conference in Brighton, Mulholland called on his party to do all it can for pubs in the next two and a half years.

“We are now half way through this coalition government that we are a part of and which we have a right to be a part of,” said Mulholland. “Have we achieved enough in two and a half years to look after, to promote, to protect our local pubs?

“There have been some wonderful things - particularly I think having pubs mentioned for the first time in the National Policy Planning Framework, a clear recognition of the importance of pubs to communities in the planning system. That is a huge achievement. And there have been some others.”

He added: “But some of the changes like the planning, like taxation, can be done quite easily. We also have to make the Liberal case, that so far we don’t seem to have been getting across, that pubs are about community, but they are also about the local economy, and every single pound spent in a pub has twice as much value to the local economy as a pound spent in a supermarket.

“So we need change, we need to have changes in the planning system that actually stop the predatory purchasing of pubs by supermarkets and developers which means we are losing pubs up and down the country, even when they are not only viable, but when they are profitable.

“We need more, if the coalition government that involves the Liberal Democrats is going to be deemed in history a as pro-pub government.”