The government has been accused of siding with pub landlords over their tenants and conducting a “phoney” review of rules governing the industry.
Publicans say they have been left “horribly exposed” to the Covid-19 crisis.
Business secretary Alok Sharma has been told by groups representing 7,000 tenants that a consultation on reforming the pubs code had “promised so much and delivered so little”. It added that the government’s response had ignored “fundamental failings” of the rules and that more should e done to make it easier to break the beer “tie”.
The British Pub Confederation, along with the GMB and Unite unions, said the government had merely “tinkered around the edge” of the code, which governs six regulated pub-owning companies, or “pubcos”.
