I declare an interest in this matter, as I am the parliamentary adviser to the National Licensed Victuallers Association. I am pleased to have an opportunity to draw the House's attention once again to the upheaval that has taken place in the brewing industry and the licensed trade since the beer orders of December 1989.

There can hardly ever have been a piece of legislation that has so utterly failed to achieve its stated objectives. We were told that the orders were introduced with the intention of increasing competition, thus providing more choice for customers and holding down prices. In fact, competition has been reduced, prices have rocketed, thousands of public house tenants have been forced out of the trade and thousands more have felt that they have no reasonable option other than to accept the terms being imposed upon them by the brewers and accept long leases at enormously increased rents, with full responsibility for repairs. The brewers have decided to destroy the traditional tenancy system. It is on its way out.

It must be understood that the brewers' actions have not been forced upon them by the legislation. The beer orders did not require them to do anything of this sort. In that connection, I should like to quote from a letter that the Secretary of State wrote to the right hon. Member for Selby (Mr. Alison) who was concerned—rightly so—about a letter that a tenant in his constituency had received from Grand Metropolitan Estates. The Secretary of State wrote: I can assure you that the action the company has taken has not been forced on it by any of the measures the Government has introduced following the MMC's report on the brewing industry. The Secretary of State went on to say that he was concerned that the letter from Grand Metropolitan Estates tried to imply that the orders had forced the company into the action it was taking against the tenant. The Secretary of State was right. The orders did not require such action to be taken. I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Selby for allowing me to quote from the letter.

In discussions with me, representatives of all the major brewing companies have admitted that the orders did not force them to take those actions against the tenants. I have been told that the companies were merely prompted by the orders to "review" their commercial strategy. Whitbread and Bass have both used that expression. What they mean by "reviewing" their commercial strategy is that, because they will have to dispose of 11,000 tied houses, they are determined to squeeze every penny they can out of those that remain. The way in which they do that is to abolish the old tenancies and to introduce long leases under which full repairing responsibility is placed on the tenants. On top of that, they introduce massive rent increases.

In your constituency, Mr. Speaker, the case of Mr. David Harper of the Clifton Arms is typical. I have spoken to your constituent and he is happy that I should cite his case, because it demonstrates the way in which things are happening. In Mr. Harper's case, less than two years ago, his rent was doubled from £12,000 to £24,000. The amount was then increased by another £2,000 because it was related to the retail prices index—I do not know why. Now his landlord, the Allied Brewery group, has invited him to accept a 10-year lease at a starting price of £36,000 a year. Before he can even accept the lease, he is required to put the place into good repair, which may cost him another £30,000. Such things are happening all over the country.

Many public houses have been grossly neglected for years by their owners, yet the owners now demand that the tenants pay all the cost of putting the public houses into good order. In some cases, the costs are enormous. I know of at least one case in which the cost is likely to be £80,000, which is a measure of the neglect by the brewers of their own properties.

I have details here of scores of cases, but as I cannot take up the time of the House in referring to all of them, I will pick one or two examples. There is a Whitbread house, the Kings Arms, in Temple Sowerby near Penrith. The present rent is just under £12,000, but the proposed rent is £22,000. The capital cost of the repairs which the tenant must pay before he can even have the lease is £10,000. There is a Whitbread house, the Seven Stars, in the Wirral. The present rent is just under £15,000, but the rent now being demanded is £35,000.

There is the Black Bull at Birstall in West Yorkshire, which I know. It is a nice, small public house for which the rent is £16,120. The owners now want £30,000. It is impossible for the business at that pub to be increased to such an extent, because it is a very small house. There is a John Smith house called The George at Stanningley near Leeds. John Smith is now part of Courage, although Courage is now called Fosters. The present rent there is just under £14,000, but the proposed rent is £33,000.

One of the worst cases is that of the Broadway hotel at Dunscroft in Doncaster. It is again a Courage house, for which the present rent is £18,000. The company now seeks a rent of £42,000. That is happening all over the country and the tenants will be required to accept all the costs of repairs.

Earlier this year, the Secretary of State met the representatives of all the major brewery companies, having received a deputation from the National Licensed Victuallers Association. To his great credit, he persuaded the brewery companies to accept the principle of independent arbitration. I thought that we were making progress. Unfortunately, matters are not quite as simple as some of us thought they were. Bass, for example, requires a tenant to put down a deposit of £ 1,000 before he can even contemplate arbitration. In many cases, the arbitrator may be appointed only from a list of people approved by the brewer. Many of them usually earn their living by carrying out valuations on behalf of brewery companies. The most astonishing thing—indeed, it is almost unbelievable—is that tenants are required to sign a lease before the rent has been fixed. What type of arrangement is that? In normal commercial life, no one would dream of doing such a thing. It is not surprising that, in those circumstances, very few tenants are invoking the arbitration procedures.

I asked Grand Met how it justified the rent increases being imposed. As many hon. Members know, Grand Met is no longer a brewer, as it has transferred all its breweries to Courage, or Fosters, as it is now called. Grand Met is essentially a pub-owning company, apart from its other interests. When I asked Grand Met how it could justify the high rent increases, I was told that tenants could easily afford them because tenants would now receive all the proceeds from the amusement machines instead of sharing them with the brewers, although they still have to pay a high licence fee and rent.

I was told that the tenants would also make more profit from guest beers. How are they to do that? Grand Met said that tenants could negotiate a discount of £30 or £40 a barrel. I said that, as brewers never sell beer at a loss, why did not the brewers knock £30 or £40 off the price of a barrel to the tenants of their tied houses in the first place? I did not receive an answer, but the sum involved would have been about lop a pint, which could be taken off the retail price and still leave brewers with a profit.

I also asked Grand Met what percentage of its tenants had left the trade completely since the beer orders were introduced less than two years ago. The answer was 40 per cent. My inquiries suggest that roughly the same figure applies to all major companies in this country. That is appalling. The tenants gain great skill and experience over the years in serving the public and in running their public houses. They have disappeared from the scene, but I am sure that that is not what the Government intended.

Meanwhile, the concentration of ownership has continued apace. When the MMC's report was published, the four biggest brewery companies had 58 per cent. of the market. They now have 70 per cent. of the market, and the proposed merger between Allied and Carlsberg will push that figure even higher.

The latest scheme devised by Bass to circumvent the beer orders—the intention, not the letter, of the orders—is to sell 372 public houses to a company called Enterprise Inns, which has immediately signed a contract with Bass to supply Bass beers to all those public houses. Nothing has changed—they are as tied as before, but they are now excluded from the beer orders, so that they have no guest beers.

I am repeatedly told that all the fuss is being caused by a vociferous minority of licensees. No one can persuade me that the 3,000 licensees who went to Blackpool to take part in a protest march during the week of the Conservative conference are all mindless militants. They are ordinary, decent licensees who want to continue to do their job of serving the public. They see their livelihoods put at risk and the traditional tenancy system disappearing. That is what concerns them.

Despite what I have said, I am not especially critical of the brewers. They operate in a hard commercial environment. They are looking after their commercial interests, but unfortunately they are doing so at the expense of the tenants and customers, the very people who are supposed to benefit from the legislation. That is the paradox that the Government will not acknowledge and that is why I must criticise them. I do not criticise them for getting it wrong in the first place. Anyone can make a mistake. I criticise them for refusing to accept that they made a mistake and for refusing to take any action to put matters right, when it was patently obvious that everything was going disastrously wrong.

In another measure, the Government extended the Landlord and Tenant Act protection to the licensed trade but they would not bring it in immediately—it had to be implemented some time in the future. Protection that does not come into effect until half the people whom it is supposed to protect have already disappeared from the scene is hollow protection indeed.

Many hon. Members believe that the Secretary of State should immediately instruct the Director General of Fair Trading to review the position urgently and in detail, so that we can discover whether there is still some possibility of saving something from this awful mess. He should not wait until 1993, which is the present proposal. By then, all the damge will have been done.

I am reminded of the famous poem, by Robert Southey, about the battle of Blenheim, when little Peterkin asks: But what good came of it at last? Old Kaspar replies: 'Why that I cannot tell,' said he,'But' twas a famous victory.' Almost two years after the beer orders went through the House, we are entitled to ask the Minister what good came of them at last. The Government certainly cannot claim that it was a famous victory. The customers are definitely no better off. Tenants have suffered great distress; many thousands of them have been forced out of their homes and businesses. The brewers, who spent millions of pounds campaigning against this legislation, have shot it to pieces.