When asked by the Conservative MP for Bexhill and Battle, Dr Keiran Mullan, given the numbers of pubs closing, how the Government’s Small Business Plan and Employment Bill would help pubs, Sir Keir Starmer went on the defensive.
While attempting to bluff his way into a response with a rather lame joke at the questioner’s expense, he went onto claim that UKHospitality had welcomed the small business plan, to much shaking of heads.
The reality is that UKH had welcomed specific aspects of the plan - the changes to licensing - but had made it very clear that those measures alone were not going to offset the cost pressures facing pubs, many of which have been created by the Government’s last budget.
The reality is that Starmer either doesn’t know the economic reality his and his Government’s policies have created, or he doesn’t care.
Extensive losses
According to the sector’s trade associations, nearly 90,000 jobs in hospitality have been lost since the last budget, around eight pubs a week are shutting up shop and one in four late night venues have closed since 2020 with that pace accelerating over the last three months to three a week.
That the sector has been one of the hardest hit following the Chancellor’s employment tax raid came into effect in April is undeniable, more than half of the UK’s job losses since then have come from the hospitality sector, according to Office of National Statistics data.
The scale of those losses is three times higher than those predicted by the Office for Budget Responsibility in the wake of the hike in employer’s NIC costs.
Add to this the lack of confidence and capability to invest into the sector, meaning businesses are desperately trying to hold steady, shore up their losses and maintain an even keel - not grow or contribute through that growth.
Damage ‘staggering’
Hospitality leaders describe the losses as “staggering” and the damage to the wider economy, an economy that the sector contributes heavily to, will contribute further to the death spiral of the wider UK situation.
And that’s not even beginning to factor in the strain on the welfare budget by those additional, totally avoidable 89,000 unemployed people.
Yet despite the clear, and growing, evidence to demonstrate the damage and harm, Starmer and his cronies show no signs of giving a monkeys. They seem to think that the paltry efforts their making, fiddling around the edge of the licensing regulations to allow more operators to offer alfresco drinking (as the winter approaches…) is the key, blithely ignoring the fact customers are not coming out as inflation bites, inflation caused by the same Government’s policies.
The decision to delay the budget feels like an extra kick in the shins, increasing uncertainty in the run up to Christmas trading and leaving businesses unable to plan for predicted further tax rises. Defending the delay, a Treasury spokesman laughably said: “We are committed to delivering one major fiscal event a year to give families and businesses the stability and certainty they need to support the Government’s growth mission.”
Except they’ll keep shifting it about to undermine that stability…
Business rates action needs to be taken now and VAT reform for hospitality, in line with many other countries across Europe, would be the shot in the arm the sector needs to hopefully pull out of this current death spiral.
But sadly, with this pigheaded Government, which appears to have less economic intelligence than my five year old daughter (and she’s got birthday money burning a hole in her pocket), I’m not going to be holding my breath.