Beer Duty

Clive Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2025 Westminster Hall

[Clive Jones (Wokingham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Murrison. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr Forster) for securing this debate. I agree with him; I, too, love beer, and I have for some time—we will not go into how many years—been drinking it and thoroughly enjoying it.

As my hon. Friend will know, back in February our party supported the beer duty cut to support our pubs. The Liberal Democrats have always supported the local pub, perhaps because of our heritage as a party grounded in community politics. Across our country, pubs and other hospitality businesses are the lifeblood of our communities. That is true of my constituency of Wokingham, where we are blessed with many excellent pubs, and I know that it is true of my hon. Friend’s constituency as well.

Wokingham is not just a place where beer is consumed, although I know my constituency team do their best in that department whenever they get the chance, but a place where beer is produced. I have spoken in the House before about some of the breweries that operate in Wokingham. Siren Craft Brew has grown from a small local producer to a significant competitor in the market, with beers such as Lumina being found in pubs across the country. Just across the road, Elusive Brewing produces Oregon Trail, which won best IPA at this year’s champion beer of Britain awards. There are also countless smaller producers across Wokingham and the Reading area, as there have been for many centuries.

Like most MPs, I am happy to stand in this House and make the case for businesses local to me, but I am not just here to plug the record of Outhouse Brewery in Wokingham town centre, whose taproom is open five days a week, including Sundays, selling the feline-themed Apocalypse Meow pale ale.

Brewers and publicans regularly tell me of the challenges that the industry is facing. We need to address those challenges head-on. When the previous Government tried to make hay out of a draught discount in 2023, they managed to apply it only to containers of over 40 litres. That excluded many producers of real cider or craft beer, like those produced by the companies in Wokingham that I have mentioned, who often ship product in smaller containers. As so often with the Conservatives, it was a break for big business, not for local businesses that really needed the support.

[Mike Wood]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way on that point?

[Clive Jones]

I will carry on, if the hon. Gentleman does not mind.

To add insult to injury, the Prime Minister at the time managed to launch the policy with a photo opportunity in which he lifted up a beer keg for all to see. The keg was a 30-litre container, which did not qualify for the discount he was launching. If I were him, I might have drowned my sorrows in a couple of pints of Apocalypse Meow after that one. The industry knows which parties in this place have its back. After pressure from the Liberal Democrats, the Government applied the draught discount to containers of 20 litres or more. I do not believe that the former Prime Minister returned to lift more kegs to mark his U-turn.

A key challenge that comes up time and again, especially when I talk to local independent pubs, is the crushing impact of the broken business rates system. The Liberal Democrats have been calling for years for it to be reformed and replaced with a commercial landowner levy based on the value of landlords’ land, which would remove the responsibility for this tax from local businesses. This fair reform has one core goal: supporting our local economies to thrive and grow. I am led to believe that the Government place a very high value on growth. They are right to do so, but they will not get it while small local businesses choke under the weight of the outdated business system and increases in employer national insurance contributions.

My hon. Friend the Member for Woking spoke eloquently about the impact of extended producer responsibility on the industry. He is not wrong. It is a cause for huge concern among those I talk to across the drinks and hospitality sector. Our party welcomes the Government’s intention to make packaging more sustainable, but it cannot be at the expense of uncertainty and financial turmoil for local businesses, with all the economic consequences that that brings.

The assumption that local authorities will recycle the packaging from drinks bought in the pub is flawed, and the proposal means that pubs may pay for waste disposal twice: once for private recycling, and then again through EPR-related charges from producers. I urge the Minister to consider our call to exempt pubs from EPR, and to review the scope and timeline of that policy to avoid further harm to our hospitality sector. Will he today commit to a review of how successful the extended draught duty cut has been in supporting hospitality? If he finds that it has been successful, with all the economic benefits that that will bring, will he consider reducing it further to help our struggling pubs across the country?