Beer Duty Escalator

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Monday 2nd July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

I would never expect anything other than an intervention from a great colleague of mine, who also is a farmer, to enable us to understand the whole process of the brewing industry and to put it into perspective for us.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate, and he is being extremely generous with his time. Does he agree that it is also ironic that we are increasing the tax on beer, which drives people to drink much more harmful substances—drinks with a much stronger alcoholic volume—so raising the duty all the time is not good for the nation’s health either?

[Gavin Williamson]

The hon. Lady makes a very valid point. One of the consequences of having a Scotsman as Chancellor for quite a period of time is that the duty on Scotch whisky seemed to be frozen. Perhaps now that we have an English Chancellor what we need is to freeze the duty on English beer. There is so much that we need to be doing. We need to be reviving our pubs. We need to be seeing that vigour and sense of community returning to all our pubs across the country.