Might the BEC report be a catalyst for change?

The fallout from the Business & Enterprise Select Committee (BEC) report continued to drift across the pub industry last week.

Pubco executives were busy briefing journalists on why the 84-page document was off beam, while over in SW1, the Fair Pint posse - anxious not to let the heat die under this bubbling cauldron - hosted an anti-beer tie shindig at Westminster attended by licensees and MPs sympathetic to the cause.

To coin a sporting phrase, Fair Pint believes it currently has the rub of the green. Say what you like about the organisation - and I've heard some things said about it - in its relatively short life it has brought the question of the beer tie and pubcos into sharp relief in a way many had tried before but without success.

The people behind it are clearly smart, if not perfect; their one-issue view that all will be well once the tie has been done away with is naive. Sure, the playing field might be slightly more level, but it would still be uneven in places, and such bumps rarely get addressed.

But credit to them, they have shown up the industry to be somewhat 'leaden of foot'.

While I have sympathy with the argument that the current furore stirred up by the BEC report and Fair Pint is doing little to help the industry's cause in the Corridors of Power™, the industry has been spectacularly unsuccessful recently in ensuring its goals are achieved in Westminster. Perhaps it has hidden behind the "blame the politician's" fence for long enough.

If nothing else, while it drew its conclusions from a relatively limited pool of resources the report is forcing people to re-think how they run their businesses and how they can do it better.

And if tenant/landlord relationships improve as a result, this can be no bad thing.