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The Government taxes pubs to subsidise House of Commons MP’s Bar

December 15, 2008

Public House think Public School the Government Gentrification of pubs continues.

Last year we the taxpayers subsidised the drinking MPs £5.5 million in the Commons.

My customers have just had another increase in beer duty with another to come next year. Is it the Governments policy to price customers out of the pub so they become haunts of the rich?

I fear the death of our pubs at the hands of the British Governments and a continued lack of support and hindsight from our MPs over the last 30 years. An underclass has been created through benefits culture – where people do not know how to work anymore. They stay at home which in turn feeds the growth of the supermarket monopoly in the UK. They have targeted the stay-at-homes with cheap take away food and drink for socialising in front of the plasma TV. The Government have increased more public jobs – paid by our taxes - to watch the people who don’t work- also paid by us. We do not have the sense of community anymore. Where I believe our pub culture had this community spirit.

Successive Governments –left and right - have raised duty on alcohol that now makes it expensive to drop in for a pint anymore. This threatens the existence of the local social network. For my daily regulars who drink 3 to 4 pints a day now have to pay more than £200 a year since last week. A daily regular will spend about £4000 - £5000 a year coming to the pub every day. Government figures report that the average price of beer in a pub is £2.57 – this is not the case for my area in the Home Counties. MPs pay 2.10 a pint in one of the 12 bars in the Commons. This is a subsidised saving of 95p a pint compared with my pub. And of course, they can put the bill through on MP’s expenses so taxpayers pick up the whole whack.

For my customers, we sell our cheapest pint for 2.80 which comprises 37p VAT and 39p Excise Duty. The pint costs 89p my profit is 1.52. For large pub companies, they can buy beer at about 30p per pint cheaper than I can. They are able to get a volume discount and can make a larger 1.80p profit. We roughly have the same running costs but with less profits - this squeezes independent publicans.

My customers want me to sell beer for as low as possible. I’ve now arranging a better deal with a national brewer, to delay this gentrification by tax. I have to put more business with the major national brewers because they can undercut the local craft brewers, whom I want to support and have regional differences.

If I do not get cheaper national beer brands to sell then I have to go up-market instead. And in using national brewers it will make a pint cheaper, but this is short sighted in the long run, you will end up in the big brands squeezing the little brewers out. This does not help the small local craft brewers and restricts choice for my customers. Our small businesses are being squeezed slowly by the Governments beer tax policy.

British Pubs are the rightly admired all over the world. They have been exported to foreign cities. Pubs were created by the people who use them as customers over the centuries. Every village or town corner had their local pub. Everyone went to the pub for news and a gossip. Here you meet the local plumber or bank manager under one roof. The pub was as popular with the workers as much as the toffs. The Pub is where most people find their future partner or meet new friends outside work or college. The pub was the local communities’ parlour. The pub is the hub – a social centre for locals to mix and thrive - good fellowship.

The pub is not about binge drinking, it is about conversation, exchange of ideas, a place to meet friends and in good pubs helping the neighbours. Good pubs care for the community – the best ones tend to be independent – even managed houses know the benefits of the informal local social network.

The general decline in society and pub starts and finishes with the Government’s policies. The big pub companies adapt to new taxation and regulations so they become unintentional governmental agents of death to the local pub – They create anesthetised soulless places where salaried managers cannot be hospitable. These managers can become company drudges without the wage budget to do a good job of service - for fear of giving something for nothing. The public stop going to the pub as a result and the supermarket chains step in with cheap take home drink and the accompanying ready meal.

Is there a political policy of making pubs middle class? Do MPs meet in a pub to discuss parliamentary business or politics? No. Do they do it on expense accounts in restaurants? Yes. Does anyone in Parliament go to a pub regularly anymore? The bars inside the House of Commons are busy and they are heavily subsidised. A reality check is needed here- we need to stop MP’s their getting subsidies and stop their expenses at our cost.

Manufacturing industry has fallen to 4% of total UK jobs and now the Government is killing off the pubs where the workers used to relax and socialise. Good bye to the traditional Celtic pubs where the old boys lined up against the bar would growl at each other with a pint a dram and a cigarette. Everyone knew everybody in these pubs.

Successive Governments are forcing these local pubs to evolve into a more expensive form of pub - the gastro pub or American restaurant chain. These type of pubs do not normally have a group of local regulars. Will it be only the well-off who come to our pubs in the future? MPs need to be made to feel the cost of their beer tax policies on my customers and the effects on society. The pub is a place that has been an institution long before costly subsidised Parliament existed.