Greg Mulholland MP calls for an investigation into price-fixing in the pub sector

He made the call on the news that regulators are launching an investigation into allegations that wholesale gas prices have been manipulated.

Secretary of State for Energy & Climate Change and former Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) minister Ed Davey MP stated on the floor of the House of Commons, in response to the allegations in the gas market, that “market abuse was always wrong” and highlighted to MPs that “allegations of market manipulation are being taken very seriously”.

He also stressed as a wider point that would apply to all sectors that “the Government has undertaken a wholesale review of how competition law is applied in the UK, ensuring that it is fit for purpose and that it can tackle collusion and abuse of strong market positions”.

Mulholland quizzed him on why so far ministers at BIS had failed to address the market abuse in the tied pub sector and the reported manipulation of beer prices.

Mulholland added: “So-called pubco ‘wholesale beer prices’, the lists presented to pubco licensees, are nothing of the sort. These are manipulated and false inflated price lists which are simply the hugely inflated amount the pub companies charge their tied tenants. No free-of-tie pub pays anything like this amount to the brewers and especially not the pubcos who use their buying power to get huge discounts, but these are not passed on.

“Ed Davey was keen to tell me that he is not now in charge of policy on this issue. The problem is, he wasn’t in charge of it last year.  

“So we now need leadership from the Government to properly, independently look into the sector and the more they dig, the more they will see a sector that is in chaos, with insolvent zombie companies in restructuring talks, who are still overcharging licensees and closing wanted and viable pubs just to stave off creditors a bit longer. It is wrong, it is unsustainable and it is holding back the real growth opportunities that exist in British pubs.”