Healey starts with a pub crawl

The newly-appointed pubs minister John Healey was on his rounds last week. He was visiting pubs in his Wentworth constituency, in South Yorkshire, with BBPA northern supremo Lee Le Clercq.

Healey's appointment, you'll remember from last week, was met with the presentational dignity and gravitas it deserves by being unveiled in the form of a News of the World exclusive.

His trip around Wentworth's pubs last week did little to dispel the scepticism of those who think the appointment of a pubs minister is a cynical attempt by the Government to win cheap publicity — also invited along for the day was a Daily Mirror man who dutifully wrote the trip up across two pages on Monday.

This opportunistic grab at positive media coverage has become a defining characteristic of this Government.

But when we've stop shaking our heads in disbelief at the sheer bare-faced shamelessness of the Government positioning itself as a champion of pubs — it is time to count the positives here.

There is no doubt that the pub sector problems have at last moved up the political agenda.

What's clear already is that Healey's unlikely to come up with anything too radical — an end to the damaging duty escalator, for example, looks like a non-starter.

Healey has however signalled that he has a few ideas in his locker. They include relaxing planning laws to allow pubs to diversify more easily, a "right to buy" for tenants at closure-threatened pubs and more protection for pubs facing demolition.

There's also talk of more support for pubs where communities want to take over ownership. The idea is that communities facing the closure of their last pub take over to run it as a co-operative.

There's no harm in looking at this more closely, but the truth is that successful examples of community-run pubs are few and far between. Britain's first pub co-op, the Old Crown in Hesket Newmarket, Cumbria, is still going strong a few years after its set-up.

Customers at the Star Inn in Salford clubbed together in December to buy their pub from Robinsons for £80,000, but otherwise the number of pubs run by co-operatives can be counted on your fingers. In recent years, co-operatives have been more prevalent in buying and running village shops and post offices than pubs.

"They won't work in every instance, but in communities where you're down to the last pub a co-op could do extremely well," says Ed Mayo, chief of the national umbrella body for co-ops, Co-operatives UK.

Community ownership is a nice idea and worth exploring. Healey is probably thinking of providing some pilot funding to develop the model further.

Such a shame that he wasn't given the job a few years back when there was a proper chance that these ideas could be followed through.