Finance (No. 2) Bill

Al Pinkerton Excerpts

Committee of the whole House
Tuesday 13th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Daisy Cooper]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Pubs are irreplaceable, and when a pub goes a community falls apart. Pubs are vital as part of the social fabric: they are the glue that holds our communities together, and we must protect them. We tabled new clause 9 because we want the Government to look at and

“report on the cumulative impact on the hospitality sector of alcohol duty measures”

alongside all the other “wider fiscal changes”, including the higher national insurance contributions and the business rates changes. This really matters.

[Dr Al Pinkerton (Surrey Heath) (LD)]

Back in November, the Chancellor promised to support the great British pub by introducing permanently lower tax rates in more than 750,000 retail and hospitality properties. In my constituency, the Half Moon will experience an 157% rise in business rates, the Inn at West End an 87% increase and the Frog in Deepcut an increase of 128%. Does my hon. Friend agree that this feels less like support and more like last orders?

[Daisy Cooper]

I agree 100% with my hon. Friend. One of the points that I have made repeatedly to other Ministers is that businesses heard the promise that there would be permanently lower business rates, and made decisions based on the fact that they had heard the word “lower”. The Government gave themselves powers to introduce a lower multiplier for retail, hospitality and leisure—20p less—and it was understood by the hospitality industry that if they used those powers, that would effectively cancel out the loss of the RHL relief. Businesses made investment decisions. They made hiring decisions. They made all sorts of decisions based on what they thought was going to happen. But the Government have not used those powers that they gave themselves, using a multiplier of minus 5p rather than the maximum of minus 20p.