PUB licensees have had much to contend with in recent years. Don’t get us wrong – the drink-driving laws were necessary to cut the death toll on our roads, and as far as the smoking ban was concerned, hadn’t most of us tired of leaving at closing time with our clothes smelling like a kipper?

However, it is highly probable that these factors, combined with the worst recession in living memory, have all conspired to reduce income levels for landlords up and down the land. Pub closure figures speak for themselves.

This being the case, most reasonable people would think that publicans should be free to embark on any strategy necessary in order to increase their profit margins and therefore survive.

The Campaign for Real Ale definitely thought so, which is why it complained to the Office of Fair Trading over fears that high rents and beer ties – where a pub is obliged to buy from the owning company – were forcing landlords out of business.

Sadly, this worthy pressure group’s entreaties were dismissed on the grounds that as the OFT had to focus on the competition issue, it felt that consumers were not adversely affected by such practices. This newspaper believes that this immense bureaucracy has spectacularly missed the point. Landlords should be free to buy in any drink they like. We should all reflect on the fact that pubs are closing at the rate of seven a day, a rate of attrition that is clearly unsustainable in an industry that has been assaulted from all sides for many years.

This was a flawed judgement and we would like to think that although a battle has been lost, perhaps the war is not over yet.