The importance of being honest

Still no date for the start of the Parliamentary review of 2004's Trade & Industry Select Committee (Tisc) inquiry — nor clear indications of just what ground will be covered by the MPs on the Business & Enterprise Committee (Bec) conducting the review.

But with every day that passes, bringing ever more disastrous reports of life in the pub trenches, so it becomes harder for the MPs to confine themselves merely to seeing if pubcos have done what was asked of them by the first report.

As more and more pubs close — five a day now, it's reported — and as more trade jobs are lost — 43,000 to date and 44,000 more to come, says the British Beer & Pub Association this week — the MPs may well feel it a dereliction of duty not to probe deeper into what exactly is causing this terrible and seemingly inexorable shrinkage of a once proud and thriving industry.

If they do, they will surely ask hard questions of the pubco bosses. Questions such as why so many tenants and lessees are throwing back the keys in utter disgust at the way they've been treated? Why so many tenants and lessees have gone bankrupt? And why, in the words of analyst Jamie Rollo this week, have pubcos been taking a bigger and bigger share of a pub's profits while so many of their licensees have been struggling to make barely a minimum wage?

They might also inquire why Britain's national brewers are on their knees, delivering pitiful margins through the few pence a pint they make on their beer?

There are no easy answers to these questions. The truth is rarely pure and never simple, as Oscar Wilde noted. And it would be ludicrous for the MPs to conclude — as some in the industry nevertheless wish — that all the industry's travails can laid at the pubcos' doors. The smoking ban, supermarket pricing, duty and changing social patterns all play a powerful role in making life very difficult for licensees.

But what the MPs might well conclude is that pubcos have not played their part in helping their licensee partners as much as they could through the difficult times.

Has the BDM network been good enough? Has it been empowered to deliver viable business solutions? Has enough support been made available across the various estates to help all those who needed it? And, most crucially of all, have the right rent levels been set?

They might also ponder a remark made by S&N managing director Jeremy Blood in the Morning Advertiser today. "You were good licensees when the times were better. You've not become bad licensees just because times have got tougher."

So why are so many good licensees failing? On the MPs' answer to that question may rest the fate of the industry.