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Publican and GB News regular Adam Brooks has issued a plea for a hospitality VAT cut

I’ve been banging on about this for four years now. Hospitality needs a VAT cut.

Not another review, consultation, or another politician turning up at a pub, pulling a pint badly and telling us how important we are.

During Covid, the Government cut VAT for hospitality to 5 per cent, before it later went up to 12.5 per cent. It was one of the things that helped keep the industry alive.

It helped businesses keep going, helped keep prices lower than they otherwise would have been and gave pubs, restaurants and hotels a fighting chance when the country reopened.

Hospitality was right at the heart of Britain getting back on its feet after Covid.

Now, finally, some much bigger names than me are saying the same thing.

Heston Blumenthal and Tom Kerridge are backing calls for a 10 per cent hospitality VAT rate. So are Pizza Express, Wagamama, Bill’s, Franco Manca, Greene King, Fuller’s, Wetherspoon and plenty more.

More than 370,000 people have backed the VATsTheProblem campaign.

Tom Kerridge summed it up perfectly. Hospitality is different from many other industries because such a huge part of our spending is on people.

You can reclaim VAT on certain products, but cannot reclaim VAT on a member of staff.

I own a relatively small pub. By my calculations, Rachel Reeves’s first two budgets have added around £30,000 a year to my costs.

Employer National Insurance contributions went up. Wages went up and business rates support was reduced. And then you have businesses seeing massive increases in their actual rates bills, in some cases close to doubling.

You cannot keep hitting small businesses with another £10,000 here, £20,000 there, another tax, another levy, another cost and just expect them to swallow it. Remember, we’ve faced an energy price crisis too… and our beer and food suppliers hiking prices.

I’m in a WhatsApp group with dozens and dozens of publicans and restaurateurs, and I can tell you now, people are pulling their hair out.

These are not all huge companies with massive cash reserves.

They are ordinary publicans, restaurant owners and small business people trying to work out how they pay the wages, the energy bill, the rates and everything else that lands on the doormat.

Then you have Labour politicians saying they support hospitality while at the same time coming up with more ways of taxing it.

Now we have plans for an overnight visitor levy on hotel stays.

They can call it a hotel tax if they want, but anyone who understands hospitality knows it will affect far more than hotels.

If hotels are quieter, the local pub next door suffers, the restaurant down the road suffers, the café suffers, the taxi driver suffers, and the late-night bar suffers.

Hospitality businesses are basically tax collectors for the Treasury.

There is VAT, alcohol duty, business rates, employment taxes, corporation tax in many cases. Our staff pay income tax and National Insurance.

Out of a £5.50 pint, by the time you look at all the different taxes, rates and employment costs involved, a huge chunk of that money ends up with the Government… around £2, all while the publican makes 15-20p!

And then if people lose their jobs, the taxpayer can end up supporting them instead.

A VAT cut is not some sort of handout to publicans and restaurant owners.

It is about keeping businesses open, keeping people employed and keeping money flowing into the Treasury.

Plenty of countries in Europe already have lower VAT rates for hospitality.

Because if something does not change soon, there will be a lot less hospitality left to save.