Date: 12 March 2008

Budget and Pub Closures

Karen Bradley, the prospective parliamentary candidate for the Conservatives in Staffordshire Moorlands today criticised Chancellor Alistair Darling's moves in the Budget to increase duty on alcohol.

Karen said:
"Local pubs are closing almost every week in the Moorlands and what our publicans need is some support from the Government. Instead, the Chancellor has piled on more taxes on beer, wine and spirits, leaving ordinary people who enjoy the odd pint or glass of wine with a meal, considerably worse off. Drinkers are going to pay over £1.5 billion in extra taxes to the Treasury in the next three years and this is only going to hit profits at our already struggling local pubs.

What we wanted was action to stop binge drinking and anti-social behaviour, but with six bottles of alcopops going up by just 18p, whilst six pints of lower strength beer will cost an extra 24p, it’s the responsible drinker who will pay, whilst the binge drinker is still able to afford their high strength cider at just 3p more per litre.

I would have liked to have seen targeted tax rises to combat the problems we have, not just another stealth tax on middle Britain."