Peter Luff, the chair of the Business and Enterprise Committee (BEC) enquiry into large-scale pub companies has intimated that a new set of Beer Orders may be required.
The Conservative MP suggested that the BEC inquiry into the dominance of large pub companies such as Enterprise Inns and Punch Taverns could put forward a plan to dismantle the pub company model.
Speaking on the BBC Wales Week in Week Out programme, Luff said: “In a sense we have come full circle since the 1989. It used to be the brewers who owned the pubs but now it’s the pubcos or the propcos, as I call them, owning pubs.
“This is really the one central question my committee has to wrestle with — do we need a new set of beer orders to deal with this new situation?”
Large-scale pub companies emerged in the years that followed the 1989 Beer Orders, which forced brewers to sell off thousands of pubs.
Luff added: “I understand the problems of the pubcos and to a certain extent I sympathise with them but that must not be allowed to destroy and undermine the pubs that they actually own."
The BBC programme considered why so many pubs were closing.
Jon Moulton, boss of private equity firm Alchemy Partners, which owns Inventive Leisure and TCG Acquisitions, said pub companies had little flexibility to offer their tenants help and may not survive the economic downturn.
He said: “They will either struggle through, and some are struggling at the moment, or they will go into some form of bankruptcy.
“The debt will be paid 70p in the pound from selling the freeholds and a new landlord, not the pubco, but someone else will take over.
“But they will be able to charge a lower rent because of course they have paid less for the assets.”
