BISC chair Adrian Bailey writes to Vince Cable, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, urging to stop delaying and get on with introducing a statutory code for pub companies. Below is his letter is in full
Dear Secretary of State,
You wrote to me on Friday announcing publication of the responses to the consultation on a Statutory Code for pub companies.
In that letter you asked the Committee to give a view in light of the evidence published. My Committee gave its views on your consultation document when we published our Report in July 2013. The task of evaluating that evidence is for your Department, and I am deeply concerned that 6 months after the end of the consultation period you have yet to do this. Any such inquiry by my Committee would take up a substantial amount of time and further delay the introduction of a Bill.
In our 2013 Report we made clear that, in a number of areas, it was for the Government to decide on the contents of the Bill and what should be included in the Statutory Code. Our key concern was that a Bill must be forthcoming:
We believe that with the right level of commitment from Government, a Bill could be introduced in this Session of Parliament. At the very least, the Government must bring one forward at the start of the next Parliamentary Session. We will expect the Department, in its Response, to provide us with a timetable for its introduction. There must be no more delays in resolving this matter. To start the Parliament with an undertaking to act and end without any change would represent an unacceptable failure.
We have not changed our view. As the Government, it is up to you to present your Bill to Parliament. Members of the House will then have the opportunity to amend it as they see fit.
May I also remind you that we agreed not to hold you to the normal deadlines for responding to our July 2013 Report. This was to allow you the opportunity to publish your responses to the consultation and our Report at the same time. It is now clear that you do not intend to publish the response to the consultation in the near future.
Therefore, I would be grateful if you could supply the Committee with a response to its Report no later than 8 January 2014.
Yours sincerely,
Adrian Bailey, Chair of the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee
