Rural Pubs: Fiscal Support

Charlie Maynard Excerpts

Wednesday 17th June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Charlie Maynard (Witney) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Hobhouse.

I thank the hon. Member for Meriden and Solihull East (Saqib Bhatti) for securing this important debate and I thank all my colleagues who gave such excellent speeches, which set out not only how much they love their pubs, but the struggles that they face. That is the important thing. I do not want to talk about how much those pubs matter to our communities or how much fun I have had in pubs over the years, because the thing that we must focus on is the big screaming problem. We need to take it seriously. Warm words go only so far right now. We have a huge problem that is hitting pubs every day, and we have to do something about it.

I will set out how big the problem is. In the first half of last year, more than 200 pubs closed in six months. That is eight a week. A year on, things are even worse. The British Beer and Pub Association said that 161 pubs closed in the first three months of this year alone in England, Scotland and Wales. That is about 2,400 jobs. Those in rural and coastal constituencies have been among the hardest hit, and according to UKHospitality, running costs for pubs have risen by an estimated 43% since 2019. One third of hospitality businesses are operating at a loss, six in 10 have cut jobs and 63% have reduced staff hours. That is bad.

Anyone knows that pubs are much more expensive than they used to be. That is hurting customers, as fewer people can afford an evening out. When a plate of fish and chips costs 15 quid, that is hardly surprising. It is obviously not because pubs are raking it in. Sadly, quite the opposite is true. Pubs are facing many of the same pressures that are hammering small local businesses across the board: spiralling food prices, high rents, sharp business rate increases, soaring energy bills, increased employer national insurance contributions and rising wages. As an entrepreneur who spent 24 years building a business, the overall situation scares the daylights out of me. I am not envious of them in that position.

I am grateful to Nick at the Old Crown in Faringdon and Tommy and Mike at the Three Horseshoes in Witney, who sat me down and talked through just how tough it is to run these businesses. The Minister is smiling at me because he is a Witney boy, so he understands.

[Dan Tomlinson]

I have spent some time in the Three Horseshoes!

[Charlie Maynard]

Well, there you are. It is a wonderful pub, and we need to keep it open.

This is all doubly tough for rural pubs. City pubs have a much larger catchment of potential customers who are within walking distance and not car-dependent, which matters with drink driving. Rural pubs are likely to rely on oil, liquefied petroleum gas or electric heating rather than the gas grid, and they have a small labour pool from which to hire. On top of all those hurdles, pubs in the countryside are much more significant to their communities, as they are typically the only pub in the village and a key hub in village life, as so many Members have pointed out.

In west Oxfordshire and the Vale of White Horse, we have fought really hard to enforce making pubs assets of community value, so that everyone understands that they cannot make a quick buck from buying a pub, turning it into a house and selling it—the cost to the community is far too great. But being a community asset alone does not pay the bills. We have to make those pubs into survivable businesses.

The changes announced in last year’s autumn Budget—the business rates revaluation and the removal of reductions that dated from the covid pandemic—led to extreme distress for publicans. While I recognise that the Government have subsequently acknowledged the crisis facing Britain’s pubs, the package of support that they announced at the start of the year, including the 15% cut to pubs’ business rates bills from April and a two-year real-terms freeze, was only a partial U-turn, and it will still leave many pubs facing a business rates increase on top of the other cost pressures that I have listed.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

From April 2026, the Horse and Groom in East Ashling in my constituency saw its business rates rise from £11,000 a year to £32,000 a year. That is an additional £22,000 that it has to find out of nowhere. It is a rural business and it is busy—when someone visits the pub, it is full, thriving and buzzing—but ironically, it does not matter if more people come through the door, because the money is leaving just as quickly due to all the additional costs. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is why those businesses need the Government to step in and support them? It is not about being busy. These are not failing businesses; they are thriving businesses that cannot make the books add up at the moment.

[Charlie Maynard]

I thank my hon. Friend for that point. Business rates feel so unjust—so arbitrary and out of control, and appeals are virtually impossible. We all beg the Minister to put doing something about that at the top of his list, because they are so grossly unfair and really rip the heart out of running a business.

We need to pick those problems apart and work out what can be done. As announced just an hour ago by our mighty Lib Dem leader, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey), getting back inside the EU’s single market would help in a number of ways. Food costs would go down if we were back inside the single market, both in pubs and on supermarket shelves. That matters: it would allow food to be sold for less, making pubs more affordable and getting more people through the door. It would also help with recruitment, as we would not need to spend thousands and waste months on visas for key staff, many of whom are from outside the UK.

Being back inside the European single market for electricity would reduce energy bills, because we would be able to buy and sell electricity when the UK or the EU had surplus energy. I am not pretending that the move would solve everything, but those outcomes would materially help. However, there are plenty more problems that we would still need to deal with.

[Mike Wood]

Does the hon. Gentlemen recognise that if the level of alcohol duty is one of the big obstacles facing rural pubs, what we need to be able to do is widen the differential in the duty rates paid on beer sold on draught in pubs or licensed premises compared with bottles and cans drunk at home alone? That would be impossible if we rejoined the European Union. [Interruption.]

[Charlie Maynard]

As my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (James MacCleary) points out from a sedentary position, I am not suggesting that we rejoin the European Union.

Employer national insurance contributions are the single biggest nightmare. It is a tax before getting out of bed, before generating any revenue and before making any profit. It is a huge mistake by Labour, and a direct result of Labour Members straitjacketing themselves into foolish promises about not touching any of the big three taxes. It needs to be unwound.

Equally, we have strongly opposed the Government’s changes to employer NICs at every opportunity, and we have called on them to reverse the tax rise in full. We are also calling for a consultation on a new NICs band of £5,000 to £9,100, with a lower rate to better support part-time workers, on whom the hospitality industry heavily relies. I have already covered business rates, so I will not go into them further.

On energy costs, the crisis in Iran has obviously made many costs, not least fuel prices, worse rather than better in the last few months. That is causing enormous pain. We would remove the main renewables levy from household energy bills, putting £270 back into people’s pockets over 18 months. That would be funded by a new windfall tax on big commercial banks, targeting the windfall interest payments they receive from the quantitative easing-related reserves they hold at the Bank of England.

[Mr Will Forster (Woking) (LD)]

At the weekend, I visited an excellent rural pub in my constituency—the Olive Tree in Sutton Green—and met the owner, Nigel, and his staff. They are doing a great job running a pub in very difficult times. Does my hon. Friend agree that, if the Government want to reset their relationship with rural pubs and help them, they should consider cutting beer duty or increasing the draught discount?

--- Later in debate ---

[Charlie Maynard]

Absolutely.

I will finish by saying that we need to look in the round at the massive cost pressures and changing consumer habits, from lower footfall to falling discretionary spending power, which combine to put pressure on pubs. A one-off package of business rates support is one thing, but we need to get back into the single market, fix NICs, reform business rates properly, fix energy costs and give pubs and hospitality a 5% VAT break. If we do not do those things, pubs in my constituency—the land of your birth, Minister —will keep going bust. We want to avoid that.