The Scottish Beer and Pub Association (SBPA) has slammed the Government for failing to restrict supermarket promotions.
While the SBPA welcomed the decision to ditch plans to include a raft of new measures in the Licensing Act, due to go live in September, and include them in separate legislation, it is concerned that an unlevel playing field has now been created.
Under the Licensing Act pubs are restricted on which promotions they can run but supermarkets will not be. Plans for minimum pricing, creating separate alcohol counters and raising the off-trade age to 21 will now be included in a new Health Bill, which could take a year to come into being.
"What will be less welcome to pubs is that the Scottish Government appear to have also abandoned their previously long expressed and manifesto commitment of extending all of the promotions restrictions which will hit pubs on 1 September 2009 to supermarkets," said SBPA chief executive Patrick Browne.
"That means that the unlevel playing field on promotions which pubs will face will not be corrected until early 2010 at the earliest, if at all.
"The fact that the Scottish Government never got around to correcting that anomaly over the last eighteen months, despite a repeated manifesto commitment to doing so, is a major oversight.
"It will mean that on 1 September pubs will be banned from offering customers a free glass of wine if they buy a glass of wine, but supermarkets will be able to offer buy one get one free promotional offers on a bottle of wine for more or less the same price.
"That cannot be right, or fair, or responsible."