Economy and Fair Work Committee
Subordinate legislation relating to the Tied Pubs (Scotland) Act 2021
Background
The Tied Pubs (Scotland) Act 2021 establishes the Scottish Pubs Code Adjudicator to regulate the relationship between tied pub tenants and landlords through the introduction of a statutory Scottish Pubs Code.
A tied pub tenant is someone who leases a pub from a pub-owning business and is required to buy their beer and sometime other products from that business.
The Scottish Government laid the following draft regulations on 2 and 3 May, to allow for this new regulatory regime to come into force in October 2024.
These have been referred to the Economy and Fair Work Committee for consideration.
The Committee will take evidence from the Scottish Government on Wednesday 29 May 2024.
This is the main instrument to implement the Act. It will create a Scottish Pubs Code for tied pubs. It will give rights and protections for tied pub tenants and place requirements on pub-owning businesses (the tied pub landlords).
This instrument would put governance arrangements in place by adding the Scottish Pubs Code Adjudicator to the list of public bodies in schedule 8 of the Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act 2010.
This would require the Scottish Pubs Code Adjudicator to annually publish information about certain types of spending and how it operates.
This instrument would—
- make the Adjudicator subject to duties on freedom of information by adding it to the authorities listed in schedule 1 and Part 7 of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002;
- allow the Scottish Government to improve the Adjudicator’s efficiency by adding it to the public bodies listed in schedule 5 of the Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act 2010; and
- make the Adjudicator subject to duties on records management by adding it to the authorities listed in the Public Records (Scotland) Act 2011.
This instrument sets out the maximum financial penalty that the Adjudicator could impose on a pub-owning business for not following with the code. It also sets out the fee level for tenants to submit a dispute to the Adjudicator for arbitration.
The Act requires arbitrations to be carried out in accordance with the rules of either the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, or any other dispute resolution body.
This instrument would allow the Adjudicator to apply the Scottish Arbitration Rules (established in the Arbitration (Scotland) Act 2010) when arbitrating in disputes.
The Arbitration (Scotland) Act 2010 is not yet commenced for the purposes of statutory arbitrations, but powers are available for the Scottish Government to treat the Act as commenced for the purposes of arbitrations under the Tied Pubs Act.
The Committee considered the five SSIs relating to the Tied Pubs (Scotland) Act 2019 on Wednesday 5 June 2024. All five motions were agreed to, on the understanding that further consultation would take place and in the expectation that amending regulations would be laid.
The Committee considered the amending regulations on Wednesday 26 June 2024 and agreed to report to the Parliament recommendation for approval.