Proverbially, politicians couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery. It appears that they cannot investigate them either.

Calls by Parliament’s Business & Enterprise committee to re-examine the pub tie which governs beer supplies for tenanted pubs miss a far larger problem, UKIP Leader Nigel Farage said today.

“When pubs are forced by the breweries to pay more for their beer than the off-trade sells it for, there is clearly something wrong with the business model.

“With pubs closing at a phenomenal rate, breweries seem determined to undermine those that remain, while the Business & Enterprise Committee seems content to whistle ‘Dixie’ and do nothing.

“Large breweries and the pubcos which depend on them have publicans in a headlock, caught between artificially high beer prices and increasing rents. They have no generous expenses scheme to tide them over. The Committee should be investigating the near monopoly enjoyed by the major brewers, and their abuse of this in giving retailers significantly more competitive pricing than the on-trade receives.”

Mr Farage said that a probe was desperately needed into the pricing policies of the breweries, which charged far more for wholesale packed beers as supplied to publicans than they did for retail packed beer.

He cited as an example the cost of Stella Artois. Tesco’s currently are offering 80 pints for £71.84 including VAT, a price broadly in line with that offered by smaller retailers and off-licenses who can not afford to offer loss leaders. That is 80 pints, retail packed, in individual tins, with all the packaging and subsequent waste that that entails.

Meanwhile, independent beer wholesalers offer a keg of 80 pints of Stella Artois to the on-trade at a best price of around £ 95 plus VAT. That is 80 pints, wholesale, in a reuseable aluminium keg. On tie, publicans are lucky to get the same keg for under £120 + VAT.