Mulholland calls on Ted Tuppen to resign

Lib Dem MP Greg Mulholland has called for Ted Tuppen to resign as chief executive of Enterprise Inns after the pubco was fined more than £300,000 for safety breaches which led to the death of one of its tenants.

Enterprise Inns was fined £300,000 with £19,000 costs by Liverpool Crown Court after Paul Lee, 41, was found dead at the Aintree Hotel in Bootle three years ago. He had died of carbon monoxide poisoning due to a blocked chimney that had not been serviced since 1979.

Mulholland, who chairs the All Party Parliamentary Save the Pub Group and is an ardent critic of large pub companies, called for Tuppen to go, saying: "This awful case has been a personal tragedy for the Lee family and the Save the Pub Group's and my condolences go out to them. They also have every right to be angry that his death was so unnecessary had Enterprise acted properly and fulfilled their basic responsibilities as property owners."

The MP said Tuppen had to accept his "moral responsibility" and resign.

"Either he must have known that his company failed to ensure regular gas safety checks were carried out at more than 400 of its pubs, putting many lives at risk, or if he didn't know then he is not competent to lead a company that owns thousands of pubs up and down the land," he said.

Mulholland said that as well as being an awful human tragedy, it was a "tragedy of current pub ownership structures with distant indebted giant property companies owning thousands of pubs, only really interested in collecting rent".

He said as well as Lee's death hundreds of other lives had been put at risk by the lapses in health and safety management by Enterprise and called on all pubcos, whether they owned one pub or a thousand, to "show that they truly care for the wellbeing of the pub and the staff that work there as their first priority".

"We need to go back to that sort of attitude," he added.