Putting a price on a pint

Most pubs I visit in London now seem to be charging more than £5 for a pint of session beer, and often nearer £6. Whereas I’d been used to drinking pints, I now tend to drink halves, and more slowly; there are limits to what most customers can afford.

In November we read of an annual increase in the national average price of a pint of draught bitter from £3.89 to £3.92. That statistic seems meaningless except, perhaps, as a measure against which to praise some much lower prices and condemn those much higher ones. As campaigners, let us please on the one hand publicise and celebrate bargains such as the afternoon discounts in suburban Wetherspoon pubs that reduce the price of a pint of cask beer from reputable independent breweries to below £2 and, on the other hand, name and shame companies like Mitchells & Butlers for charging in excess of £6 for a comparable pint.

We should not, however, be complaining about the brewers or the publicans. As I have argued before, we should instead be campaigning more pointedly against the ‘wet rent’ business model operated by the property companies whose anti-competitive supply ties force inflated prices on publicans whose customers then cannot afford to buy enough beer to cover the pub’s ‘dry rent’ and other overheads. Nationally, we used to conduct our own CAMRA annual prices survey, which helped branches to call out unscrupulous profiteers aiming, for alternative planning purposes, to argue that their pubs were no longer viable.

The Prime Minister, Chancellor and departmental ministers may quite understandably be inclined to reject heartfelt pleas from the likes of the British Beer and Pub Association about beer duty, disproportionate business rates, discriminatory VAT, etc when they can see the success of businesses such as Wetherspoon’s that give their customers such a better deal. Indeed, reports at the time of the autumn budget suggested that the Government had got the message that there were structural competition issues that needed to be addressed – as CAMRA had highlighted in 2021 in urging changes to the Retained Vertical Block Exemption regulatory regime that underpins the tied house system.

A second prong of our campaign against extortionate pricing, I suggest, should be to highlight the criminal offence of misleading omission under the 2008 Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations. The absence of any price indication at many bars is a disgrace, leaving customers to be startled when told how much only after being served, especially if the half pint is disproportionately expensive, for example at £3.50 as against £6.70 for that pint of draught bitter. It is surely high time a test case was prosecuted, if only Trading Standards had the resources.

Thankfully, many pubs, clubs and brewery taps do offer excellent value for money, and of course that is about more than just the prices they charge. It is rewarding to seek them out, especially after working up a healthy thirst on the bike. Let’s hope for better weather for the rest of this year!

Geoff Strawbridge
Convener, South West London CAMRA Cycling Section