Mulholland: OFT does not care about pub tenants

Lib Dem MP Greg Mulholland has slammed the Office of Fair Trading for its "phenomenally poor" decision to take no further action on the beer tie.

Mulholland, chair of the All Party Parliamentary Save the Pub Group, said the Government now needed to act after the OFT proved it did not care about pub tenants.

"This is a phenomenally poor decision by the OFT, given the amount of evidence submitted I am genuinely at a loss as to how they have dismissed this complaint," he said.

"Once again they have completely missed the point and have justified taking no action on the grounds that there is no lack of competition, but what we have is competition between a few large companies who have a stranglehold on pub ownership and are all operating a business model that is unbalanced and makes it difficult for many tenants.

"The Save the Pub Group said all along that the Office of Fair Trading was not the right body to handler a far reaching complaint of this nature.

"This referral has been as the Save the Pub Group predicted a distraction, it was always for the Government to wake up to what has happened to the "pub tie" and take action to both give tenants a fairer deal and to stop pubs closing.

"The Save the Pub Group will be pushing them with renewed vigour to do this.

He added: "The super-complaint submitted by Camra offered hope to landlords and tenants who have for years suffered under the yoke of unreasonable management companies, the message to them today is clear — the OFT don't care about you.

"Pub companies have just been given the all clear to carry on exploiting tenants, over charging them for goods and exposing them to punitive levels of rent."