To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what steps he is taking to support pubs.

This Government is committed to supporting a fair and flourishing pubs sector. We have scrapped the beer duty escalator, and in Budget 2015 we cut beer duty for the third year in a row.

Through the Community Right to Bid, we are giving community organisations in England a better chance to save their local pub by listing it as an Asset of Community Value (ACV). And, from 6 April, we will strengthen the hands of communities whose pub is listed as an ACV still further by removing permitted development rights from those pubs.

Through the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill, we are introducing a Statutory Code of Practice and an independent Adjudicator to govern the relationship between large pub-owning companies and the thousands of tenants that run tied pubs across England and Wales. These measures will help to ensure the pubs industry continues to flourish, to the benefit of all those who work so hard to make the pub the mainstay of our communities.