Dear Kwasi,

Urgent – please stop discrimination against pubs regarding takeaway

First of all, may we welcome you to your new role, a hugely important one in this desperately challenging time for so many businesses, including pubs. We hope you will be a champion for our nation’s world famous pubs and we also hope you will engage with pubs and publicans, not just with pub-owning companies and their representatives.

We are writing to you, on behalf of our members and pubs and publicans, to urge you to reverse the unfair and discriminatory decision to ban pubs from selling takeaway alcohol during this latest lockdown in England.

During the first Covid-19 lockdown in March 2020, the option for pubs to sell food and alcohol on a takeaway basis was permitted by the Government. For those licensees who did so, it provided a welcome lifeline to enable them to just about keep their heads above water and maintain their profiles within the communities they served. It also enabled small brewers to continue to brew and sell draught beer, without which we would have seen more brewery closures than those that sadly did close…