Taxation: Beer and Pubs

Gill Furniss Excerpts

Tuesday 31st October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

We hope, Mr Owen. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I congratulate the hon. Member for Dudley South (Mike Wood) on securing this debate. It was in his company and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth) that last week I tasted and enjoyed many UK beers with the Titanic Brewery.

I will comment briefly on some of the contributions. My hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Gloria De Piero) made very astute references to microbreweries and the tax break provided for them by the last Labour Government; I hope the Minister will tell her that that will be retained. My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham) made an interesting point about the valuable work that young people and students can get in the hospitality industry, including in pubs.

It is worth mentioning at this stage some of the worries of brewers and pubs in the city of London about their requirements for European labour after Brexit. We also need to look at the planning issues, which my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley East (Stephanie Peacock) mentioned, including permitted development rights.

The British pub is renowned around the world. Since the oldest one was established in the 11th century, the pub has continued to be a central feature of British life—a unique social hub for meetings, discussion and debate. Since then, of course, the world has drastically changed, but the continuity provided by the presence of a pub in the community remains. It is important that we work to preserve and encourage the growth of our pub industry; it makes both economic and social sense to do so.

According to the British Beer and Pub Association, the sector supports 900,000 jobs, with 42% of them held by under-25s; generates £23 billion in economic value; and provides £13 billion in tax revenues. On top of all that, 30 million adults visit the pub every month, which is proof that the British pub is not only a business but is at the heart of our communities. It brings people together and continues to be on the “to-do” list of almost every tourist visiting the UK.

Yet drinking establishments across the UK continue to be under severe threat. We have all seen the boarded-up pubs in our constituencies, not least because of the burden of the business rates evaluations but also because of the unequal relationships between large pub-owning businesses and pub tenants. Unfortunately, the pubs code as it currently stands has failed to deliver effectively what it was set up to do, but that is a debate for another time.

I return to beer taxation. As colleagues have already said, it was announced in the 2016 Budget that the duty on beer, spirits and most ciders would be frozen in the year 2016-17. That freeze on a typical pint of beer followed three consecutive years of beer duty cuts. On the other hand, duties on other alcoholic drinks, including wine at or below 22% alcohol by volume and high-strength sparkling cider, rose by retail prices index inflation. However, in March 2017 the Chancellor announced an RPI increase for beer too, which beer groups have called a “setback”, especially given the fragile environment that pubs find themselves in.

Can the Minister confirm what the beer duty RPI increase has meant in prices for customers and what mechanisms are in place to monitor the effectiveness of any such measure? When the beer duty freezes were introduced, Labour did not oppose them, but we asked questions about what the tax freeze meant in distributional terms. For example, the freeze favoured those who consume more of the relevant types of drinks. The equalities impact statement relating to last year’s freeze noted that

“any changes to alcohol duties will have an equalities impact that reflects consumption trends across the adult population”.

However, it failed to outline the specific equalities impact with respect to gender.

Although men are more likely to drink excessively than women, statistics from the Office for National Statistics show that wine, the tax on which was not frozen, is the most popular drink among women, while the most popular type of drink among all ages of male drinkers was normal-strength beer, lager, cider or shandy. Additionally, many trade bodies questioned why wine was singled out for a duty rise. Any future decision about alcohol levies should take that point into consideration.

Underlying this debate is a recognition of the importance of the pub as a local community hub and of the need to ensure that we do what we can to support it. That is why Labour is committed to securing the long-term future of pubs and the hospitality sector. Action must be taken to ensure that pubs are profitable and worth running as independent small businesses.

The Conservatives have neglected the needs of small business in favour of introducing tax breaks for big business that have failed to stimulate investment or create the high-skilled, well-paid jobs the country needs. Their cliff-edge approach to Brexit risks our access to the single market, and risks damaging all business by prioritising an economically damaging, undeliverable and unworkable cap on immigration at all costs.

Labour is the party of small business. We know that small businesses are the backbone of our economy, accounting at the start of 2016 for 99.3% of all private-sector businesses and 60% of all private-sector employment in the UK, or 15.7 million people. That is why we will end the Conservative attacks on small businesses by reforming business rates, scrapping quarterly reporting, ending the scourge of late payments and reforming employment allowance. Under a Labour Government, pubs will have the support necessary to thrive and grow.

Concentrix: Tax Credit Claimants

Gill Furniss Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2016 Westminster Hall

[Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

As constituency MPs, we are all aware of the hardship and suffering caused by Concentrix. By definition, people receiving tax credits are on low incomes and are not able to cope with a sudden drop in that income. Concentrix’s “Shoot first, ask questions later” approach, in which recipients have been accused of living with people they have never heard of, it takes more than an hour for their calls to be answered, and it is suggested that they get by on payday loans while Concentrix sorts out its mistakes, caused anxiety, distress and extreme hardship. In many cases, we have had to make personal referrals to food banks, so that people can feed themselves and their children. We all have examples from our postbags and inboxes of shocking cases in which families have been left struggling to make ends meet.

By way of example, I want to put on record some of the highlights—perhaps I should say lowlights—of the many cases I have had to deal with in recent weeks, and show the pattern of incompetence that has been exposed. More than three quarters of the cases I have dealt with have been of people accused of living with the previous tenant at their address. In one case, a constituent found after asking their neighbours that the person they were suspected of living with was in prison.

It is worth pointing out that with a handful of exceptions, all the cases that have come to my attention have been raised by women, and two thirds are from single mothers. In nearly two thirds of the cases, constituents found their tax credits stopped without any prior warning. When they contacted Concentrix, they were told that letters had been sent to them weeks previously but not replied to, hence the stopped payments. The occasional letter going astray in the post is one thing, but Concentrix is apparently sending letters into some black hole, never to be seen again. Advice given over the phone has been inconsistent and often contradictory. My constituents have reported that, as have my staff.