Pring; Tisc, Tisc — another inquiry?

With falling beer sales hurting profits and consumers nervy about spending, the last thing big pubcos need now is another investigation by politicians and regulators.

Yet that's what a group of licensees are determined to bring on. If they get their way, they're confident they won't fluff their lines as they did in the 2004 Trade and Industry Select Committee (Tisc) inquiry.

The Fair Pint campaigners want to kill off the tie and be free to do their own beer deals. They have companies such as Punch and Enterprise, Admiral and S&NPE firmly in their sights. These are the companies they're mostly contracted to — and deeply unhappy with. Family brewers are exempted — the campaigners have no beef with the way they do business.

Disaffected pubco licensees are already rallying to their cause. No surprises there. More disconcerting for the pubcos is that within Parliament there already exists quite a deep well of sympathy for the plight of licensees. Numerous MPs, conscious of record pub closures in their constituencies, are speaking out in support of Fair Pinters and calling for a fresh look at the pubco model. Thirty MPs to date have signed an Early Day Motion that is highly critical of pubcos. All-Party Parliamentary Beer Group chairman John Grogan — no friend of big organisations exercising dominance over licensees, as Sky will testify — is to see the campaigners' leaders shortly.

How worried should pubcos be? Is there really a chance that just a few years after they sailed through the Tisc inquiry with a clean bill of health, and after the OFT only last week waved away calls for a pubco probe, is there really any remote possibility that pubcos will once again be in the dock?

Well, yes, there is. In fact, it is not at all inconceivable. Consider how the plight of local post offices has moved up the politicians' agenda. Even Cabinet ministers came out against colleagues and supported their constituents' closure protests.

Consider also how Licensing Minister Gerry Sutcliffe recently dared to voice his concerns about the damage duty rises are doing to pubs. And then consider how in thrall the prime minister is now to his angry and nervous backbenchers. If they say they want a look at what's happening to Britain's pubs, why shouldn't there be a Tisc II? It's even more of a possibility when you remember that the chairman of Tisc I said his committee would re-investigate if his recommendations were not acted on.

Well, apart from the BII's excellent work on codes of conduct, there has been little progress towards Martin O'Neill's proposals on machine income or total transparency in rent setting, to name just two contentious issues.

We'll see how this plays out in the coming months. But there's certainly a new game in town. Pubcos need to be on full alert.