Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps he is taking to specifically support the recovery of public houses, within the hospitality sector, from the impact of the covid-19 outbreak.

In response to the pandemic, we put in place one of the world’s most comprehensive economic responses worth £400 billion, including business grants, loans, business rates relief, and VAT discounts.

This Department has also published a comprehensive strategy to help the wider hospitality sector recover. The Hospitality Strategy focuses on domestic solutions to support the sector’s recovery post-Covid and we aim to build on the sector’s strengths and address its challenges to create a resilient, dynamic, innovative, and green sector which plays a leading role in local communities, high streets and city centres across the country.

The recently established Hospitality Sector Council (HSC) has also been set up to support delivery of the commitments set out in the Hospitality Strategy and identify wider measures to improve the resilience of the sector.

Officials in the Department and I continue to speak regularly with representatives from across the hospitality sector so that we can understand the challenges they face and work with them to boost demand and enabling businesses to trade more flexibly.