This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
News
Small brewers bemoan Budget
SIBA, the Society for Independent Brewers, has described George Osborne’s Budget as a “kick in the teeth” for small brewers and “ruinous" to the nation’s thriving local brewing sector.
It said the increase of 2% above inflation in beer tax, which had been planned for some time, ignores its contribution to the economy and puts thousands of jobs in breweries and pubs in jeopardy.
SIBA chairman Keith Bott said: “This is a real kick in the teeth to the local brewing sector, one of the few British success stories of recent years. Local brewers are just the kind of business this government says it wants to see prosper: they create jobs for local people and contribute to the local and wider British economy by using home-grown ingredients. Yet the current beer taxation regime is killing off our main route to market – the British pub.”
He continued: “The Treasury claimed before the Budget that their beer duty escalator is ‘baked in’.
"We say it is half baked! Continuing to increase taxes on draught beer, drunk in the socially responsible environment of the pub, will serve only to increase purchases of cheap vodka for unsupervised home consumption. We fail to see how this policy can help tackle binge drinking.”
Ben McFarland, 31.03.2011