Brookes: OFT beer tie report is ridiculous
Absolutely ridiculous — that's the message from multiple retailer Tony Brookes of the Head of Steam company to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT), following its latest report on the beer tie.
North East based Brookes has written to the OFT voicing his disagreement with its conclusion that there are no competition issues in the pub sector caused by the beer tie.
"Those of us who spent a lot of time and energy working to provide you with evidence will feel suitably astonished and angry," he wrote.
"Clearly you are just a Government office full of lackies who are too heavily influenced by the big guns in the licensed trade and don't care about workers on the coal face. Either that or you are mathematically inept.
"Did you not receive our company's submission to yo? If so, why did you not read it? If you had, you would have seen that it contained very clear evidence, in numerical examples, of how the beer tie operated by the big pub companies strangles competition.
"Do you not think it anti-competitive that Wetherspoons' pubs sell drink often at lower prices than our tied pub can buy for; or that supermarkets can sell to Joe Public products that cost tied licensees three times the price to buy?
"How do you not regard those practices as uncompetitive?"
Earlier this year, Brookes delisted Heineken as its major supplier after the brewer's pubco arm refused to allow it greater product choice at its one tied pub.
