Healey is foggy on the tie

Pubs minister John Healey finally flashed his ankles last week. After a six-week pub crawl Healey came up with a number of sensible ideas for supporting community pubs.

Buried deep down in last week's press release was a bit of a bombshell. He called on the tenanted operators to voluntarily offer a free-of-tie option and a guest beer for those tenants opting to retain the tie by June 2011 — or face a new Beer Order. Typically, though, there was little in the way of detail to guide anyone on the mechanism that Healey has in mind.

Does Healey think a free-of-tie lease should be offered to all existing lessees or just new entrants? Does his edict apply to the regional family brewers? The Morning Advertiser tackled him on the last point in a telephone interview and what was clear was that Healey wasn't ever so sure. When pressed on the point he finally opted to declare that it applied to everyone.

Surprisingly, though, given how far-reaching his policy points are, he was suggesting to the Morning Advertiser that we needed to cut him a bit of slack, given he'd only been doing the job for a few weeks. Not good enough, is it, to be so flaky on detail? The major operators have been pointing out that a free-of-tie option exists already — and most licensees prefer not to add to their fixed costs by going free of tie.

Last year, Bateman's offered its tenants the chance to go free of tie, pointing out that rents would increase substantially. Not one licensee took the company up on its offer. However, Healey's comments will make tenanted operators very nervous. Peter Luff, the Tory head of the Business Innovation & Skills Committee, hailed Healey's remarks as a tightening of the noose around the pub companies' necks.

Nervousness will stem from just what Healey actually means — and whether this is another weakening of the principle of the tie being a generally good thing. His talk of slashing beer ties suggests he thinks that the tie, as currently operated, is not providing consumers with sufficient choice. For brewers with pub estates there will be particular nervousness — the supply tie is at the heart of their maintenance of brewing traditions.

Healey and his Government are likely to be gone come May's election.

But the tie and pubco/tenant issues seem to have become caught in the tractor beam of election politics — what's known in the vernacular as a political football. A Campaign for Real Ale debate last week saw Conservative Licensing Minister Tobias Ellwood virtually making policy on the hoof — the mood of the room seemed to push him to back a referral to the Competition Commission.

Meanwhile, it's business as usual at the Treasury, where Alistair Darling yet again proves he doesn't give a fig about the damage he's inflicting on the trade.