Mulholland: "It's time to give the British pub back to the British people

Well, well, well. The cat is now officially out of the bag. Right out of the bag and running round for all to see. So now it is official: The way that big pub companies are operating 'the tie' is bad for tenants, bad for pub customers and a threat to the future of the British pub.

Parliamentary select committees, when they do their job, are possibly the most effective form of scrutiny in our democracy. A few months ago we saw the Treasury select committee tear into the bankers who had led their own sector to disaster. This time, it was the turn of the companies who own Britain's pubs.

Flicking through the devastating report by the House of Commons Business and Enterprise Committee phrases crop up like "alarming evidence", "agreements not being honoured", "little or no support", "bullying" and "abuse". An outsider would think this must be a description of life in Far East sweat shops, but the sad truth is, it is what is going on in the British pub trade today.

In the past, there has been something of a rosy relationship between the big players in the pub trade and I think that some in the trade thought that MPs could be fobbed off or hoodwinked. The Business and Enterprise Select Committee, however, ably chaired by genuine pub lover Peter Luff MP, have done their public duty and exposed the sorry reality of what has happened since the Beer Orders to the British pub sector.

The picture it paints is one all too familiar to the thousands of tenants struggling to make a living and the many former tenants who have lost their business because of a business model that had become so skewed as to make it impossible for them to succeed. The report makes clear that the situation is serious, seriously unfair and unsustainable.

The report also makes clear that some of those who appeared before the committee were neither credible nor honest witnesses. It should be extraordinary that senior pubco figures gave misleading evidence to the committee, but it isn't.

It almost makes the bankers look like good guys. At least they had the good grace to apologise. Not so the pubco bosses and their apologists and with a level of gall surprising even for them, their response to the report is closing their eyes, covering their ears and shouting la-la-la, the usual and now officially preposterous uttering's still coming out; "no problems here", "we are not closing pubs" and - best of all - "the tied model we operate is great for our tenants".

The game is up, chaps. There is no rowing back this time. The truth is that, just like the bankers, you have got you have got yourselves into this mess with bad decisions leading to an unsustainable business position and an increasingly unfair and unworkable method of operating. This is now going to have to change.

So the cat is out of the bag. No doubt those at pubco HQs will be desperately hoping they can shove it back in, tie up the bag and throw it in the canal, but that isn't going to happen.

The era of greedy non brewing property companies dictating the future our local pubs must now be brought to an end. It is time to put the British pub into the hands of people who care about them including the many landlords who work so hard to keep pubs going, excellent small breweries who want to sell their beer and of course local communities who morally own their locals many of which have been undermined or closed by companies that have lost their way. It is time to give the British pub back to the British people before it is too late.

Greg Mulholland, MP for Leeds North West, is chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Save the Pub Group​.