Marston's Pub Company boss Alistair Darby has rejected criticism of the firm's new freetrade prices deal by anti-pubco group Fair Pint.
Marston's is trialling a scheme that allows tenant to earn freetrade discounts in return for a higher rent. The rent increase is discounted by the amount by which beer volumes are expected to decline over the next three years, leaving tenants around £5,000 per annum better off straight away.
Fair Pint claimed the scheme would still leave tenants worse off than if they were fully free of tie.
Darby said: "We are delighted that our announcements about the new Advance agreement and Project Phoenix have promoted extensive debate since this is the surest sign that tenants and lessees have a grasp of what we are trying to do.
"Fair Pint has not seen the actual detail of the Advance agreement so it is not in a properly informed position to be able to judge it.
"The comment that we are 'simply giving with one hand but taking away with the other' is factually incorrect since we have made it very clear that we will not add the full amount of incremental discounts earned to the rent.
"Indeed we are aiming to make a customer taking this agreement on average £5,000 better off in the first instance!
"We are going to trial this agreement in 50 to 60 of our pubs: the success of this will be a far truer test of the quality of this agreement than any debates in the press.
"On a final note we do take encouragement from Fair Pint's grudging recognition that what we are doing 'is a step in the right direction'. This must count as real praise coming as it does from Fair Pint!"