Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has been accused of “utter hypocrisy” amid fears of “more tax rises” under his Government, as new figures have highlighted the sheer economic impact on Britain’s hospitality industry.
New data released by the Altus Group has shown that in England and Wales, an estimated 50 pubs a month were forced to close in the first half of 2024.
President of property tax at Altus Group, Alex Probyn, warned that even more pubs could be forced to close their doors for good ahead of the awaited Labour Party Budget in October.
He said of the figures: “The last thing pubs need is an average business rates hike of £12,160 next year through inflationary rises and the loss of the discount.”
Adam Brooks hit out at Labour for ‘going back on their promises’ ahead of the Budget in October
PA / GB News
Hitting out at the Prime Minister, pub landlord and commentator Adam Brooks accused Labour of “going back on their promises” outlined ahead of the July General Election, claiming that even more closures of pubs are “inevitable”.
Reacting to the new data, Brooks told GB News: “You’ve got to remember, a third of a pint is effectively tax, so we are effectively collecting taxes for HMRC.
“It’s no wonder there aren’t many wannabe landlords that want to come in and take over these pubs. A lot of the younger generation now are very health conscious. They have house parties, they go to events or concerts, so we’re getting hit always.”
Explaining the financial blows that have hit pubs in recent years, Brooks noted that the Covid pandemic caused a huge surge in bills and costs to keep pubs going through lockdown.
Around 50 pubs a month were forced to close in the first half of 2024, new figures have revealed
PA
Brooks admitted: “If I put my prices up in line with a lot of my suppliers, you’d be seeing £7 or £8 a pint. We’ve lost a lot of profit.
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“It’s getting harder out there. The government doesn’t help, the high taxes don’t help – one of my pubs was paying five and a half grand a month for electricity alone during Covid.”
When asked by host Martin Daubney what he would want to see from Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s Budget in October, Brooks fumed: “It’s such doom and gloom at the moment, I cannot believe this Labour Party.
“We all knew they would be bad, but they have shocked me beyond belief with quite how bad they’ve been over the last 11 weeks. We have seen utter hypocrisy. Really, they’ve just gone back on a lot of the promises that they sold.”
Casting doubt on the Government offering any help to the pub industry, Brooks told GB News: “There’s nothing really that I can see the Labour Party doing to help publicans.
Adam Brooks says British pubs are ‘dying out slowly’ as a result of the Labour government
GB News
“We’ve got high rates of tax, which we believe could even go even higher under Labour, and it really does hurt some of the smaller pubs out there.”
“Britain is changing, and unfortunately, we’ve really got to support our local pubs because they’re a part of British culture, they’re part of our heritage, and they are dying out slowly. It’s a drain on our finances and it’s a lot of work for us to do.”
Offering a possible solution for pubs in Britain, Brooks concluded: “It’s keeping prices higher as well, so the only thing I could see that would help the pub industry is a VAT cut, and this mob are not going to cut any sort of taxes at all.”