Beer and Public Houses: Government Assistance

(asked on 2nd February 2022) - View Source

Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what steps his Department is taking to provide additional financial support for the pub and brewery sector; and whether he has made a recent assessment of the potential merits of reducing (a) business rates and (b) VAT for those sectors.


Answered by
Helen Whately Portrait
Helen Whately
Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
This question was answered on 10th February 2022

The Government is committed to supporting the pub and brewery sector.

As announced at Autumn Budget, the duty rates on alcohol, including beer, will be frozen for another year. This is expected to save consumers £3 billion over the next six years and will save beer drinkers £900 million. Beer duty rates are now at their lowest level in real terms since the 1990s.

The Government also announced on 1 October 2021 a new reduced rate of 12.5% would apply to eligible goods and services in the tourism and hospitality sector, to ease affected businesses back to the standard rate. This new rate will end on 31 March 2022. While the Government is sympathetic to recovering businesses, this relief has cost over £8 billion. It is appropriate that temporary tax reliefs are first reduced and then removed in order to rebuild and strengthen the public finances.

On business rates, the Government is providing a new temporary relief worth almost £1.7 billion for eligible retail, hospitality and leisure businesses, resulting in over 90% of retail, hospitality and leisure businesses receiving at least a 50% reduction in their business rates bills in 2022-23. The Government has also announced the multiplier will be frozen in 2022-23, a tax cut worth £4.6 billion over the next 5 years.

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