Leeds MP attacks Government over lack of protection for pubs

Liberal Democrat MP Greg Mulholland warned in the Commons that the Government risks making a “laughing stock” of the new role given to Paul Newby, and questioned the appointment process as “extremely dubious”.

Business minister Anna Soubry strongly defended Mr Newby after announcing he is to be the country’s first adjudicator governing the relationship between large pub-owning businesses and their tied tenants in England and Wales.

But Mr Mulholland said the chartered surveyor’s background as a director for property valuer Fleurets, working on behalf of pub companies or “pubcos” Enterprise Inns, Marston’s Brewery and Punch Taverns, results in a “clear conflict of interest.”

Steve Kemp, national officer of the GMB union, said: “This appointment is the mother of all stitch-ups. An adjudicator is someone who needs to be impartial and without baggage, not closely linked to the pub companies as Mr Newby is, as a director of Fleurets. The Government has failed miserably at the first hurdle and GMB calls on ministers to appoint somebody much more suitable to the job.”