The boy done not too bad

The Trade & Industry Select Committee's pubco report is a curious mixture of naivety and crassness but also spot-on accuracy of judgement.

Naivety shines through in statements like "pubcos should recognise they have a responsibility to ensure they do not exploit their position of economic strength." Get real: that's central to the pubco model.

Crassness hits you in the face through analysis that concludes that because no one pubco holds a dominant market position, not even the shabbiest of pubcos can be accused of exploiting their tenants. Loan sharks don't have a dominant market position in the financial world, but that didn't stop Parliament legislating to force them to clean up their act.

Little wonder then with ignorance like this, all that disappointed tenants can see in it is a pubco triumph in pulling wool over politicians' eyes. But they shouldn't despair. If they accept that their expectations of pubcos being brought to their knees were always totally unrealistic, they may see that there are some suggestions that could make a major difference to the way pubcos behave.

With contracts and rent setting, the MPs' hard-hitting comments go to the heart of the still-too-often troubled tenant-pubco relationship. They call for cost-free arbitration and dispute-resolution. They call for far greater financial and business transparency on the pubcos' part. They call for mandatory independent professional advice before a pub changes hands. And, most fundamentally of all ­ the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors should be quaking at this ­ they call for new, more professional guidance for rent calculation.

The mildness of the Committee's language, and their clear reluctance to tilt at powerful financial institutions, should not disguise the fact that this is a challenging report. All frustrated and struggling tenants should take comfort that if things don't improve in the next few years, then Parliament may actually do something dramatic. Whether that threat is enough to make pubcos sit up and and at last introduce some clarity to the murky business of pub letting and rent calculation, who knows.