Let me finish my point and I will give way. The Select Committee said:
“The BBPA (British Beer and Pub Association) has shown itself to be impotent in enforcing its own timetable for reform and the supposed threat of removing the membership of pub companies who did not deliver was hollow.”
Just last year the chief executive of the British Beer and Pub Association misled the Select Committee and said two things that were factually untrue, as well as presenting a series of baseless evidence.
Finally, before I give way, I will read what the Select Committee said in its 2008-09 report:
“As is noted elsewhere in this Report…in evidence to us both Mr Thorley of Punch and Mr Tuppen and Mr Townsend of Enterprise Inns made assertions which, on investigation, proved to give a partial picture, or on one occasion were positively false.”
Members on all sides of the House can know exactly how to take the absurd and baseless claims from those organisations.