Punch Taverns deny gay discrimination at Greencoat Boy pub as Metropolitan Police investigate

Following events at the Greencoat Boy in London yesterday, pub chain Punch Taverns have released a statement* responding to claims that members of LGBT Labour were refused service on the basis of their sexuality. The chain may soon find themselves on the wrong end of the Metropolitan Police, whose hate crime unit is in contact with the activists involved.

Punch Taverns seeks to provide open and welcoming venues to everyone. We are shocked and saddened that a group of our guests at The Greencoat Boy on 5 June feel they did not experience this and would like to apologise for any offence caused.  We would however like to stress that this is an isolated incident and is not representative of our commitment to diversity and inclusion, which is a core part of our ethics across our estate.

We are currently conducting a full investigation of the incident and will report back to the Labour LGBT group with our findings. In addition, we have this morning contacted all of our general managers and pub teams to remind them of our policies and will seek to work with external partners to further enhance our training to ensure that inclusion remains at the heart of it.

The story has now gone mainstream with BBC coverage, but their remarks to the media seems pretty muddled. While the above statement offers an apology and they tell the Beeb this was an “isolated incident”, their spokesperson ”denied the group were refused drinks because of their sexuality” and “disputed whether the duty manager had made the statement about bookings”.

If they didn’t discriminate why apologise and launch an investigation?!

UPDATE: Anthony Painter hits the nail on the head:

*Many thanks to Richard Lane for forwarding this on. Punch Taverns promised to send Scrapbook their statement but then didn’t bother. We wonder why!