Julian Grocock: MPs need to recognise the importance of beer and pubs

In my time I've been a bitter-supping student, a real ale fundamentalist, a barman, a bar manager, a pub landlord, a pub company director, a microbrewery MD, and a brewing association chief executive.

With my single-minded dedication to such a career path and its accompanying lifestyle I might owe apologies to a couple of wives, but otherwise I'm unrepentant.

And these days I'm immensely proud to be in a position to defend beer and pubs and to fight for their long-term survival.

But that does not mean I am prepared to be an apologist for the wider drinks industry, and I refuse to be targeted as such.

I am not going to be told - not by MPs or health lobbyists or anyone else - that it's alcohol abuse that keeps beer sales up.

Beer gets lumped in with all other alcoholic drinks, that's what was implied in the recent report on alcohol by the parliamentary health committee. As always the feature on BBC Breakfast was illustrated with archive film of pints of good ale being pulled in traditional pubs and drunk by responsible adults.

I don't accept that the beer that I drink is just another means to ingest a dosage of alcohol units. Such beverages do exist, and I abhor them as much as the campaigners do. They're as sweet and bland - designed for juvenile palates and rapid consumption...and scumbag behaviour and bright-coloured vomit.

And traditional British brewing should not be prepared to circle its wagons to help give a false aura of respectability to such insidious concoctions.

The health committee MPs did actually fumble some way towards statements in support of pubs and against cut-price supermarket booze and 'industrial strength' drinks. That's why, in the current climate, SIBA has voiced cautious support for the possible introduction of minimum pricing.

But if we are to maintain this stance we need to see some positive reciprocation from the health lobby and from government, including an acknowledgement of the vital role beer and pubs have to play in the development of an effective strategy to combat the ills of alcohol abuse.

I'm sure that would achieve far more than headline-grabbing sledgehammer "solutions" - like the mandatory code that puts the overwhelming majority of conscientious on-trade retailers in the firing line while yet again failing to aim at the off trade where so many of the root causes of the problem lie.

For the truth is that selling more - not less - quality beer in proper community pubs would indicate the revival of responsible and moderate consumption within a socially cohesive drinking culture.

That is the beauty of good beer and good pubs.