Housing and Planning Bill (Fifteenth sitting)

Richard Bacon Excerpts

Tuesday 8th December 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to resume where I left off, Mr Gray. I hope that Conservative Members, particularly the hon. Member for South Norfolk, have had a good lunch and continue to look forward with enthusiasm to the Minister’s response to the new clauses, not least out of concern for and interest in jazz at small venues, but also out of more general interest in the concerns of small music venues that may be at risk.

[Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)]

Mr Gray, for the record I feel I should point out that I have had no lunch at all. The time I had allocated for lunch was taken up with that vote we have just had and I just managed to eat a banana on the way up here.

[Mr Thomas]

The hon. Gentleman has, I am sure, secured the sympathy of the whole Committee. Anyone reading the extracts from Hansard of this section of the debate will be instantly sympathetic.

As well as paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham for the way she introduced this debate, I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley East (Michael Dagher), who has championed the new clauses and worked with a number of organisations within the music industry concerned about the impact of planning legislation on music venues. It is in part through his work, as well as the work of the industry itself, that the idea of trying to write into legislation the principle of an agent for change concept being established in planning law has come to fruition. The industry points to a number of examples where this principle is already written into law. I am told it has been particularly successful in Melbourne in Victoria, Australia, and I think it is well worth looking at in the British context, not least given the sharp decline in music venues in London.

On Thursday evening we will all go back and Government Members will celebrate the fact that the legislation has got through its Committee stage and that they have successfully resisted any temptation to engage with the Bill in a critical way. They might want to go out on the town to celebrate, and look for a music venue. Perhaps the hon. Member for Peterborough will want to go out to see an ABBA tribute band—he has the look of someone who likes that type of music—