MP Greg Mulholland slams October enforcement of new pub Industry Code as 'embarrassing'

07-May-2012 - Last updated on 11-Mar-2017 at 20:48 GMT

Critical: Greg Mulholland has slammed the delayed enforcement of new Framework Code

Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Save the Pub Group, Greg Mulholland MP, has slammed the announcement that the revised Industry Framework Code (IFC) governing tenant-pubco relations will not come into force until the end of October.

Mulholland has written to minister for employment relations, consumer and postal affairs, Norman Lamb, to express the group’s disappointment at the length of time the code is taking to come into force.

He believes this undermines claims made by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and the British Beer & Pub Association (BBPA), that the self-regulatory package of reforms announced in November last year would bring about ‘immediate improvements’.

In a debate in Parliament in January, MPs voted in favour of a motion calling for a review of the revised industry code in the Autumn, but the Government have since stated that they will not commission a review.

“The news that the revised IFC will now not come into force until the end of October is yet another blow to the credibility of the BBPA and the Government’s so-called self regulatory reforms to the pubco tied system,” said Mulholland.

“It is frankly embarrassing that last November we were told by the then minister that there would be immediate improvements and that the codes would be somehow legally binding by Christmas 2011; the reality is that those codes, which don’t change anything fundamental anyway, will not now be in force until nearly a year after they were announced, which is pitiful.”

Meanwhile, the Independent Pub Confederation (IPC) said the IFC revisions remain incomplete. The IPC said they have had two meetings with the BBPA since Christmas and confirmed that the discussed code revisions are ‘work in progress’.

Simon Clarke, campaign manager and secretary of IPC, said: “The IFC may seek to address certain issues but these were never the primary focus of IPC’s collective position. The rebalancing of risk and reward remains the ultimate goal for tied lessees and tenants.

“With no free of tie or guest beer option, and no machine tie release, the issue of rebalancing risk and reward remains practically untouched.”

A BBPA spokesman said: “The immediate improvements we agreed to make took place, and the new version of the IFC became legally binding from 1 January 2012. This makes clear that all new entrants and existing tenants and lessees can rely on the provisions of the IFC.

“We are now looking at the more commercially sensitive issues, which involves discussions with many other interested parties. We expect this to be completed by the end of June and come into force by the end of October.

“We will continue to work to ensure that the Code is always as robust as it can be in promoting effective partnerships between pub companies and tenants/lessees, and this is very much an ongoing process.”