Britain's pub groups are considering a raft of legal action including resorting to using human rights law to keep the 400-year-old beer tie in place, bosses warned this weekend.
The controversial rules were dealt a potentially fatal blow last week when MPs voted to let tenant landlords free themselves from the tie, which requires them to buy drink from their parent pub company.
Tenant publicans in the public gallery of the House of Commons wept with relief, but Britain’s largest pub owners, including Enterprise Inns, Punch Taverns, Admiral Taverns and Greene King, were furious at the outcome. Now the ‘pubcos’ are gearing up for a legal challenge which could derail the process.
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/n...-beer-tie.html
I drink to make others more interesting
Fuller's won't be directly affected because they own less than 500 pubs, but they're still complaining anyway...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/n...ner-chief.html
Of course they'll complain. It's what companies do. See what happens any time anyone suggests the slightest tightening of employment law, like treating your staff properly.
Fuller's could do a lot worse as it is when it comes to guest beers, see for example the Harp or the Doric Arch
Well they'll always be staunchly in favour of the tie as long as the Pope remains a Catholic, as it ensures a captive market for their beer. Guest beer policy isn't the main point here. The issue is really about non-brewing pubcos acting as beer wholesalers to their tenanted houses using the dry-rent/wet-rent arrangement.
Many would say that a company insisting on selling its own beer in its own pubs is fair enough. But if you don't own a brewery and operate your own supply chain selling third party products at inflated prices then that could be said not to be in the public interest; though beneficial indeed to your shareholders.
Last edited by NickDavies; 24-11-2014 at 09:02. Reason: typo
Of course, the main target is Enterprise, Punch, Spirit and M&B, but Marstons, Greene King and a few others will also be caught.
The 'family brewers' will generally be exempt, as will most other pub-owning 'small and independent brewers' who are usually understood to be more reasonable with their tenants (although doubtless not in all cases...).
Slightly more problematically, the smaller pubcos such as Youngs also look to escape the net, but the line needs to be drawn somewhere in order to concentrate on what is seen by some to be the "more-rapacious" and 'bigger fish'.
I despair of Youngs. If there were awards for the some of the crassest, most insensitive pub refurbishments Youngs would win most of the prizes. It can only be oversight or listed building status that has kept places like the Lamb untouched.
The Fuller's guest policy seems patchy to me, there are two Fuller's pubs near me dahn 'ere
One is allowed local brewer guest [Havant brewery] the other is only allowed the Fuller's "whatever we are trying to flog from Fuller's brewery" as an option, AKA Hobson's Choice, the landlord told me he only sold a few pints a week of the Fuller's HC, losing money on every barrel
The former is adjacent to a Wetherspoon's, which may explain the choices allowed
I drink to make others more interesting