Clegg: 'I don't like the big guys beating up the little guys'

The Liberal Democrats may be Britain's third party - but after the next General Election they could wield a significant amount of power.

Some commentators have predicted we could see a hung parliament with the Lib Dems being asked to potentially form a coalition government with the Tories.

Unlikely? Yes, but nonetheless buoyed by a young and intelligent leader in Nick Clegg, and in Vince Cable, a Shadow Chancellor who has been running rings around his counterparts for some time, the Lib Dems are arguably as serious a proposition as they have been for a generation.

Another Lib Dem, Greg Mulholland, also has a high profile in the pub trade with his outspoken views on the beer tie and no-holds-barred attitude to the pubcos.

So what could the Lib Dems do for the pub trade? Here we catch up with Clegg, a former co-chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Beer Group, who says he "loves going to pubs", but is now limits his visits while he juggles the responsibilities of being a father… Minimum pricing. You have come out in favour of it. Why do you feel this is the right action?

What really swayed me was walking into my local supermarket and seeing that you can pick up a 70cl bottle of vodka for less than duty and VAT combined. This is really hard stuff, being deliberately sold as a loss-leader. In other areas of economic policy it would be illegal. It's wrong. It has a direct knock-on effect on the pub trade. There's also clearly a relationship between that and binge-drinking. Should the supermarkets take the majority of the responsibility for alcohol-related problems?

They have a very heavy responsibility for shifting large volumes of alcohol from their shelves at a loss. That's only something the large supermarkets can do. The problem is epidemic and the government is behaving like a political ostrich and just sticking its head in the sand and pretending this isn't an issue.

The trade estimates a mandatory code of practice would cost more than £300m to implement in its first year. Is a mandatory code necessary?

I'm in favour of any code which seeks to try to enhance best practice in terms of responsible drinking. The government's intention is quite good, but the way they implement it could be quite rigid. You could end up using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. We do need to look at greater flexibility with the way the code is implemented, you could give local authorities and licensing authorities greater flexibility about how the code is adhered to rather than having this straightjacket imposed from Whitehall. An industry campaign is calling for the duty escalator to be abandoned and a freeze to take hikes in next month's Budget. Do you support this campaign?

I am staunchly opposed to the eight per cent increase imposed in the Pre-Budget report, because that's a classic example of an ad-hoc decision taken by the government because they claim it was to off-set the overall reduction of VAT. But everyone knows the VAT cut will be reversed and the duty hike won't be. So I think that spike needs to be challenged and we have done a great deal of work in the House of Commons to vote against it time and time again. One of the problems is that duty is used by a succession of Chancellors not to pursue public health objectives, but to act as kind of constant raid on an easy target to fill a black hole in the Treasury coffers.

Don't get me wrong, I'm in favour of duties on alcohol which reflects its special status. What I'm not in favour of is it being a cash cow to bail out a Treasury that can't look after its own books. One of your fellow Lib Dems, Greg Mulholland, has been very outspoken on the issue of the beer tie. Do you agree with his views?

There's clearly a problem - I've spoken to licensees who feel their hands are tied. They want more freedom to buy beer from where they want, to run their business how they want, and not to be hammered by high rents imposed upon them by companies who don't seem to have their hearts in the pub trade and basically use it as a cash cow. It does need to be looked at. I will look at the outcome of the BEC committee very closely.

In the meantime I would invite any of your readers who find themselves tied to their pubcos to get in touch with their local Lib Dem MP and give us their version of events. You do now have some very big companies dominating the beer trade as a whole. I'm an old-fashioned liberal. I believe in competition. I don't like the big guys beating up the little guys. I've always felt there's a case for the competition authorities to look at it all over again. So you see it as an unfair model?

It's clearly unfair from the point of view people won't be able to run good pubs. By definition it must be unfair. You are paying rent through the nose, and you are not allowed to decide where to buy your beer from. The companies of course say that this is the contract these people sign up to.

But I want to hear from people - this is the opportunity for those families and individuals running pubs in those situations to tell us what they think.

And you fully support Mulholland in standing up to the pubcos?

He's doing a good classically liberal thing, which is standing up for the little guy and standing up for communities. He is making sure the community role of the pubs is recognised and not just saying that because large corporate interests think it should be different, that it's right. I'm immensely pleased with the work he's doing and I think he's doing it in a way that is great benefit to pubs up and down the country. The other issue is there is a lack of any special recognition in planning guidance to say pubs have a special status. Communities should be given a say before a pub is closed. Has the change in the licensing regime been a success?

I've always been in favour of the liberalisation of licensing hours. And I remain of the view that turning the clock back is not an option. There is something deeply wrong about saying to adults they have to put their glasses down and get out at the same time, 11pm. But what the government got wrong is, if you liberalise the licensing hours, but don't do anything about price, about supermarkets, about the culture of binge-drinking, you create a terrible cocktail that produces a lot of health problems.

The smoking ban - did you support it? And do you recognise the impact it has had on the trade?

I recognise the controversial nature of the ban. I recognise for lots of folk in the pub trade it has clearly hit them very hard. I myself was very torn on this issue for some time. I'm a Liberal, I don't like banning things and I was until fairly recently a light smoker myself. In years gone by I loved having a drink and a smoke in a pub. But I actually came to the view that the evidence was so overwhelming on health grounds. I'm afraid some of your readers might not like this, but evidence shows it has made a dramatic difference and I can't really imagine any government reversing this. I hope we get, over time, a return in levels of people going to the pub.

Would you work with the Tories to help pubs?

I would work with whoever wants to save pubs. It should not be an issue to score political points on. What I do know is that Liberal Democrats, whether it's Greg Mulholland, or myself at national level, we will stand up for local communities and pubs are a core part of those. What makes a great pub?

Character, people. Location. I think a pub is like a home really. People have a very instinctive reaction when they go into someone's home. Everybody has the same intuitive reaction in a pub. You can tell when a licensee has put their heart and soul into it.