Time to reshape trade bodies

The pub trade's leaders are in crisis. Their pubs are closing. Their beer sales plummeting. And their lead trade association is near impotent.

For the Establishment, used to years of success, this decline has become intolerable. The acme of frustration was reached last week in the Commons. Five Government ministers, summoned to learn of the iniquitous effects of beer duty, instead lectured the trade on what they are doing wrong. How galling must it have been for Messrs Thorley, Findlay and Neame to be told by the Treasury and licensing ministers it was not duty hurting pubs, but pubcos.

Following on from the indignity of hearing anti-pubco remarks to the Tisc2 committee by the rival Association of Licensed Multiple Retailers, dignitaries at the British Beer & Pub Association felt enough was enough and slid their chief executive the silver-handled revolver.

Yet merely replacing Rob Hayward — a decent man and, in truth, a shrewd political operator — will achieve nothing. The problem rests not in individuals, but irreconcilable conflicts of interests. The BBPA is a house divided. Since the Beer Orders, the trade has polarised, with power shifting overwhelmingly to the pubcos, to the obvious detriment of the brewers.

The BBPA has become like the United Nations, where compromise and achieving the right "process", rather than the right outcome, is the aim. This contrasts markedly with the Scotch Whisky Association, which is much more focused and has done far better in the duty wars. This means there is no vision of where the trade should be going. Licensing, smoking, duty and health all became lost campaigns.

The answer has to be a reshaping of the trade's lobbying. Brewers must reinvent the Brewers' Society. Retailers must regroup in alliance with the ALMR. Vertically integrated brewers, with a foot in both camps, can sit wherever — perhaps most effectively in a strengthened Independent Family Brewers of Britain body.

And national pubcos? The uncomfortable truth is no one wants them. They are too powerful. Or at least, they were. Now, with puny asset values and Government set to mount Beer Orders Two, they may be off to the breakers' yard. Dismembered, they could sit more easily in the retailers' body.

Creating separate trade bodies for brewers and retailers will not lessen conflicts, but it could make for a more honest debate about where the trade should be going. And bodies that respect each other's position should be able to work better together when required.

We should not expect miracles from our trade bodies. But licensees — who still remain unrepresented — deserve better than the current system. Here is a unique opportunity to reshape the political landscape. We must seize it firmly.