75 MPs join group to reform beer tie
Around 75 MPs and Peers have joined the new politicians' campaign group to save the pub, which focuses on reform of the beer tie.
All-Party Parliamentary Save the Pub Group chairman, the outspoken MP Greg Mulholland, has urged licensees to get in touch with them about their particular problems.
The seven aims of the group are:
• Calling for lower levels of beer duty and scrapping planned rises.
• Challenging the Government to look at supermarket beer pricing.
• For "reform of the current model of the tie", which "makes it impossible for some licensees to make a living and leads to pub closures including by making some pubs unviable that would be viable if free of tie".
• For a change in the law to outlaw the practice of restrictive covenants whereby companies are selling pubs on the basis that it is prevented from being a pub.
• For changes to planning law to properly recognise the importance of and to offer more protection to pubs faced with closure.
• Other issues as deemed relevant by the group.
• To give MPs help and guidance in support of campaigns against pub closures in their constituency.
Vice chairs of the group are Barnsley MP Eric Illsley and Northampton South MP Brian Binley.
"MPs and Lords are concerned because they see pubs closing in their areas," said Mulholland.
"They are having their own licensees come to them saying they are not getting a fair deal."
The Lib Dem MP for Leeds North West said meetings with relevant Government departments will be set up over he next few weeks.
"This is absolutely not going to be a group that just sits around and talks, it is going to be about building pressure and using opportunities to raise these issues in Parliament and push the message that action is needed now to save pubs."
On the issue of the beer tie, Mulholland said they would wait for the outcome of the Business and Enterprise Committee inquiry into pubcos, expected next month.
"It will be important to push that [the beer tie] more firmly up the political agenda."
The MP was unfazed about working with groups representing pubcos, given his criticism of the tie and pubcos in general.
"We will be working with all pressure groups and organisations that are concerned about the future of the pub. We will agree with some on some issues and perhaps not on others."
Licensees interested in contacting Greg Mulholland should address correspondence to Greg Mulholland, House of Commons, London, SW1A 0AA.
