Rebecca Smith

It is a privilege to be able to speak in the debate that my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswinford and South Staffordshire (Mike Wood) has secured on the important topic of heritage public houses. I am very privileged to have 64 pubs in my constituency—there are a couple of Conservative clubs included in that number, which is worth mentioning. That is quite a few compared with some Members, who I know only have a handful. In particular, the more urban constituencies are not always fortunate enough to have as many pubs as constituencies that, like mine, are a nice mix of urban and rural. Given the nature of my constituency, which in large part is made up of historic villages that have either merged into the city of Plymouth or have remained as very sweet South Hams or Dartmoor villages, we have a large number of historic pubs. They would have been stopping points for travellers, potentially travelling up from Cornwall through Devon and on to London, and a key part of the community, including in fishing and rural communities. Villages such as Noss Mayo and Newton Ferrers have four or five pubs between them. They are very small, and people would be shocked at how many there are, but I can reassure Members that they maintain a healthy trade. The Mussel Inn in Down Thomas is another key country pub that serves excellent food. Plympton and Plymstock were villages before they were absorbed into the city of Plymouth. They have some very historic pubs, and I will touch on a couple of them shortly, but it is worth mentioning the village of Turnchapel. We proudly still refer to it as a village, but it is now an important part of the city of Plymouth. Turnchapel has both the Boringdon Arms and the Clovelly Bay, which are key parts of the community. Fortunately, they are being kept going by the marine autonomy work that is happening at a former Royal Marine base next door. There is the historic Drake Manor in Buckland Monachorum—hopefully, Sir Francis Drake would have been pleased to be its namesake. Milton Combe has the Who’d Have Thought It, a classic thatched pub at the bottom of a hill in a tiny little village, which serves the most wonderful food. I always make sure to go there with friends just before Christmas. We have a fantastic community-led pub in Cornwood that was recently shortlisted for one of the Countryside Alliance’s rural prizes and came all the way to the House of Commons. Although it was not a winner that day, we are very proud that it was nominated. The Old Smithy, which is not named after me, is a very good pub in Ivybridge. Those are just a few of my pubs. Like others in the Chamber this morning, I will not name all of them, but I think it is was worth putting those ones on the record. It is also worth mentioning the names of such pubs. We have heard of Woolsacks and all sorts of historic names, and we know that even the bars in Parliament are named for specific historic reasons. I particularly want to mention the Skylark in the little village of Clearbrook. If anybody is ever on Dartmoor, they will hear the skylark tweeting away across the moors. What is so wonderful about historic pubs is that their names reflect something that is either historic or specifically tied to the culture of the local community. Such names draw young people into connecting with the history. I want to make special mention of the community groups all over the country that help pubs to survive by sending people on walking routes around them, or by highlighting them through competitions. There is a thriving Facebook page called Plymouth on Tap, which runs a comprehensive competition for pubs in different communities and chooses winners. It is worth mentioning the volunteers behind such Facebook pages and websites, who do so much. Plymouth on Tap says that it is about: “Mapping Plymouth’s pub history & fighting for the ones we’ve still got.” I pay particular tribute to the organisers of that group this morning. That leads me to the value of Members of Parliament running competitions. Like many others, I have run a pub of the year competition. I am delighted that the winner over the last two years has been a historic heritage pub in my constituency, the London Inn in Plympton St Maurice, which is an old village. It is a 16th-century grade II listed building, but can still muster enough votes to have won for two years in a row. I am adding some extra categories for the year ahead to make sure that other pubs can win, but Simon, the landlord, knows that I am doing that. Hopefully, he will push for the best pub in Plympton award, and maybe—who knows?—he will win overall best pub as well. I come back to my point about the importance of heritage pubs and the stories they tell. As I have alluded to, the village of St Maurice was along a major route to London. Who would have thought that little old Plympton St Maurice was a stopping point on the way? It has an incredible history that I will not go into fully, but perhaps I should apply for an Adjournment debate on it at some point. Plympton St Maurice was the home of many fine 17th and 18th-century artists, so if anybody is waiting to speak and wishes to look up the history of Charles Eastlake or Joshua Reynolds, they will see that the London Inn may well have been frequented by them, as they were schoolboys at Plympton grammar school and then went on to be leading figures at the Royal Academy and the National Gallery. If anyone is bored this morning, they can have a look while they are listening. The London Inn sits below a ninth-century castle. Such pubs are historic not just for the buildings themselves, but for their heritage, because of the communities that they sit in. The fact that a pub is so old usually means that the community around it has been there for that long as well. That leads me to another heritage pub, the Union Inn, which is also in Plympton—as the House can tell, Plympton is a very old part of my constituency. What I love is that these buildings do not get hindered by the listings that they might have, and the fact that they are not allowed to make changes to their interiors. In the Union Inn’s case, it creatively uses its garden space, which is now the home of the Plympton Royal British Legion branch. I have attended several ceremonies with the RBL in the garden of that historic pub. Although the rooms are small and it is incredibly cosy inside, it does have land around it. I was privileged to attend a D-Day event and a VE Day commemoration event, and I know the pub will appreciate that mention this morning. Those are two clear examples of the strong community roles that these heritage buildings—by nature often constricted because of their physicality—can play in their neighbourhoods. It is worth just touching on why these heritage pubs need saving in the first place and why we need to look at this legislation today. Given the nature of their fabric, it can be harder to bring in the numbers or to diversify into serving a carvery or a particularly complicated food menu. For these heritage buildings with tiny little rooms and steps everywhere, serving food in the way that a lot of modern, purpose-built pubs do will be particularly difficult. We know that pubs are facing considerable challenges, given the economic climate and the tax increases that the Government have levelled on them, whether it is the increases in national insurance, the minimum wage for young people or business rates. Government Members will say, “We’ve done some work on business rates for pubs,” but the damage has already been done in many cases. That is yet another reason why we must protect these heritage pubs by enabling them to maintain their roles within the community and by ensuring that they cannot be turned into houses. I recently met a constituent who is starting on the journey towards securing a community asset certification for a local pub that has been sold. Ultimately, the hoops that have to be jumped through are incredibly difficult. I will not name the pub, because I do not want to ruin what my constituent plans to do and the work going on in that community to do things properly, but it has highlighted the concern in communities where these pubs exist that they could lose their public house designation and see a change of use. What my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswinford and South Staffordshire (Mike Wood) is doing through this legislation, which builds on what is already there, is important. The hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier) has highlighted the legislation that exists already. Ultimately, nobody wants to see what is often a large building in a village turned into flats or the equivalent. I grew up in the city centre in Plymouth in a community called Greenbank, which is not in my constituency, but is just outside. It is historic. It was once fields, and it has seen a lot of building over the years. I am not sure we could say it was famous for this, but on pretty much every corner was a pub. If I walked to school, I would walk past probably four or five small neighbourhood community pubs in among the terraced houses. One reason for that was that the neighbouring communities were owned by Brethren family, who would not allow any pubs in their area. That meant that Greenbank, where I grew up, made up for it in numbers, and there were plenty of pubs for anybody who lived in St Judes, Hyde Park or Mannamead in the constituency of the hon. Member for Plymouth Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard). However, because those pubs were not assets of community value, but were just neighbourhood pubs, they have, pretty much without exception, been turned into student accommodation—I think the Providence Inn, around the corner from where I grew up, is effectively now somebody’s living room. There is nothing worse than seeing historic pubs that were part of a Victorian neighbourhood turned into student accommodation. Indeed, the one at the end of the road that I grew up on—it would have been built as an inn on the corner of a crescent—is now student accommodation. What was once a lounge bar and a place where people could play darts or pool, or pop in and have a drink with community—people used to have friends in these pubs that they would go and see—have all been turned into properties that people are now living in. Students are great, but they do not live there the whole year, and instead we have lost that community asset. That is why this legislation for heritage public houses would be so helpful. It would ensure some control over the changes within a community that might affect the very fabric of what is going on in that area. I am not going to speak for much longer. My hon. Friend the Member for Kingswinford and South Staffordshire is well known for his love of a good ale and is a big supporter of the APPG for ale—is it ale? I am not an ale drinker, so I never quite know the name. I drink the odd beer, but I am not a big warm ale fan. I would rather be in a nice country pub drinking a glass of wine.