Coronavirus: Supporting Businesses and Individuals

Charlotte Nichols Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Charlotte Nichols (Warrington North) (Lab)]

The past year has been terrible for so many people and disastrous for innumerable business sectors, but as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on pubs, I want to speak for those iconic small businesses, whose livelihoods have been shuttered by the Government for months through no fault of their own. An industry of 900,000 jobs contributes £23.6 billion to the UK economy annually and its venues are the lifeblood of our communities.

Pubs in my constituency of Warrington North, including the Station House in Padgate and The Albion and The Hawthorne in Orford, have gone above and beyond to support our community throughout the pandemic, providing free school lunches, a food bank and an online community to keep regulars connected, but they have been left without support.

Many publicans were looking to the Prime Minister’s announcement in the hope of refreshing news, but they remain mostly parched. Few industries have tried harder to comply with changing Government rules than pubs. Landlords spent thousands of pounds on adjustments to make their venues covid-secure, imposed unpopular and unscientific curfews, invested in tech like apps for ordering drinks, reconfigured their spaces to allow for social distancing, and even tried to unravel the esoteric substantial meal or scotch egg requirement. Yet not only did their revenues collapse, but they invested in perishable stock only to be shut in a trice because the Government had failed to limit transmission rates, spending the year doing the hokey cokey, bouncing in and out of rolling regional closures at little or no notice. So, compared to their existential crisis, last night’s road map was small beer indeed.

Pubs will look forward to reopening outdoors in April and indoors in May, assuming they can survive that long. The Chancellor’s grants of up to £9,000 have hardly made up for the shortfalls of the past year, and the whole pub industry will be looking for additional support in his Budget.

The British Beer and Pub Association estimates that 60% of pubs will not be able to open during step 2 of the road map and that many of those that can open will struggle to operate viably. That cannot be considered a proper reopening, and these pubs and landlords will still be hit hard by these requirements. Financial support will still be needed until all pubs can open fully, so Ministers should know that the Campaign for Real Ale is calling for an extension to the VAT cut and for it to apply to alcohol sales, the cancellation of business rates for another year, and furlough to be extended until every pub is properly open again, as well as a lower rate of duty on draught beer to encourage people back into pubs when they reopen.

With summer days ahead, the Government must not permit the Royal Oak to be felled and the Red Lion to be shot. These are the cornerstones of our communities, giving employment, communal spirit and mental health to so many people, and they must be supported through these dark days so that we can come together in our pubs to celebrate their end.