The British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA) are reporting that pubs, bars and restaurants lost 5.7bn in revenue in beer sales in 2021 as people avoided pubs and drank wines and spirits at home. The trade body notes that the hospitality sector could have served as much as 1.4 billion less pints than they would, during normal trading conditions. It found that beer receipts fell by £681m to 5.4bn, while wine receipts increased £583m to 7.7bn and spirit receipts rose 784m to 6.9bn.
The Treasury has said it froze beer duty for a fourth year saving brewers £900m. They also said draught relief - aimed at supporting pubs by cutting taxes on their most popular products - would see the duty on a pint fall by 5%. Under the new plans, a pint of 3.4% alcohol beer will attract 25p less in duty and VAT.
However Richard Piper, chief executive of charity and campaign group Alcohol Change UK said , regarding lowering taxes -
‘it would apply equally to the supermarkets and because of purchasing volumes, this in fact makes the differential between pub and supermarket prices even bigger – harming pubs’
He also states that ‘Beer duty cuts are primarily called for from the huge manufacturers, not pub landlords. These massive beer producers, many of them not even based in the UK, love to hide behind the pub image, while behind the scenes they are raking in millions in profit from alcohol harm.'
