Danny Kruger
Main Page: Danny Kruger (Conservative - Devizes)Department Debates - View all Danny Kruger's debates with the HM Treasury
Beer and Pub Taxation
Danny Kruger Excerpts(4 years, 2 months ago)
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Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)
I will be quick. I very much welcome this debate, which comes in the context of a great thrust of Government policy towards investing in economic infrastructure, which I wholeheartedly welcome. Equally, we should surely be investing in the institutions of our communities, and that should be just as important an area of Government focus. We are thinking about all sorts of interesting ways that we can do that and about new forms of investment in the social capital of our communities. What we have already is the tax regime around pubs and, as we have heard, in many places pubs are the absolute heart of our communities.
Mr Gray, the Devizes constituency is of course the most beautiful part of Wiltshire. We have a whole number of brilliant pubs and brewers there. There is the great Wadworth Brewery in the heart of Devizes town, there are Ramsbury ales, and there is a small micro-brewery that I visited recently, called Stonehenge Ales, run by a Danish couple who came over here many years ago because of our culture of brewing and because they believed in the traditions of English ales and brewing. They have made a tremendous success of that.
I echo the points that have been made, particularly around small breweries relief. There is a clear problem with the cliff edge and a need to smooth the withdrawal of the benefit. Surely any loss to the Exchequer that would follow from increasing the tax relief for brewers would be more than made up for in the growth in receipts as the industry grows.
Business rates are probably the biggest barrier to the hospitality sector and the role it plays, particularly in towns and high streets. I very much welcome the Government’s review of business rates, because we need to see our pubs strengthened as the heart of our communities.