Rural Pubs: Fiscal Support

Jess Brown-Fuller Excerpts

Wednesday 17th June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Claire Young (Thornbury and Yate) (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 debate.

The Lamb Inn in Iron Acton was built in 1690. It is believed that Mary and William of Orange stayed there. It is a real community pub that has been run by Tracey and Brendan Byrne for the last 20 years, but the Byrnes tell me they have a long list of burdens bearing down on them, including employer national insurance contributions, business rates, VAT and alcohol duty, all of which are under the direct control of this Government.

That is the reality facing rural pubs across Thornbury and Yate, and indeed the country. These are not simply places to drink; they are community anchors, spaces for the lonely, meeting points for neighbours and outlets for local breweries and farmers. Pubs in villages and hamlets without the footfall that town centre pubs enjoy, which often have higher energy costs, cannot absorb pressure the way larger operators might. When they close, nothing replaces them—the loss is permanent.

Greg and James at the Swan at Nibley have also been hit by National Highways closing a road for three years. They are looking forward to trade improving from this weekend, when the closure ends, but they say that a cut in VAT for hospitality would make a big difference to them and all pubs in our area.

The employer national insurance rises have forced publicans to make brutal choices about staffing. Those hit hardest are young people looking for their first job—the kind of formative, confidence-building experience that hospitality provides. Previously, pubs were able to employ 10 to 15 young people, working a few hours a week; now they struggle to employ three. That is a dozen NEETs for every pub lost, in more than one way.

[Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. She is right to highlight the number of NEETs in this country. We probably should not call them NEETs, because so many of them are trying to find employment, education or training. They want to cut their teeth on the opportunities that hospitality venues such as rural pubs provide. Does she agree that, if we can take some pressure off those rural pubs, they will be more than willing, ready and able to bring young people into their businesses, to give them the skills to go on and do other things? Right now, with the pressure that they face from all angles, the owners end up doing all the work themselves.

[Claire Young]

I agree. The Swan has been taking on apprentices, but many pubs are unable to do so because of the challenges. There is often a lack of opportunities in our villages and, with transport issues, it can be difficult to travel to places where they can be found.

On business rates, Liberal Democrats have consistently called for a fair and more proportionate system. The Government’s partial climbdown—a 15% reduction on a planned hike, after sustained pressure from the House—was welcome but it went nowhere near far enough.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.