Dear Chancellor,

We are writing to you as Chancellor of the Exchequer, as publicans, the people who actually run the UK’s famous pubs.

We urge you to provide support for pubs – not global brewers and offshore pubcos – in the Budget on 26th November.

Pubs are the beating heart of Britain’s communities – providing jobs and vital social spaces, besides being vital assets for tourism – yet they are being driven to extinction by spiralling costs and punitive taxation.

Since the election of this Government in July last year, UK publicans (and our customers) have been bitterly disappointed by your lack of support and indeed, understanding, for the reality for pubs and publicans. Warm words that simply haven’t been backed up with any positive action or support.  The triple whammy in last year’s Budget (business rates relief cuts, higher Employers’ National Insurance, and minimum wage rises) has already forced closures, staff cuts, and damaging price hikes.

As you will have seen, publicans responded with dismay at the recent hype and spin around the announcement about licensing reforms and the suggestion in the media that this (and specifically allowing later opening for pubs) would somehow help them and grow the economy. The current reality is that many pubs have been forced to close earlier to reduce costs, put prices up and layoff staff as a direct result of your 2024 Budget measures that came into force in April 2025.

This was on top of the Treasury claim that your decision to slightly reduce beer duty on draught beer “reduced the price of a pint in the pub” when in reality, the combined damaging impact of your Budget was to hike the price by 30-40p per pint. Beer duty cuts do not help pubs or publicans. Beer duty is a production tax, not a tax on pubs, and any freezes or reductions have a negligible impact on pubs and publicans while instead funnelling extra millions to global brewers.

Please do not repeat the travesty of last year, when publicans were dismayed at your claim to be ‘taking a penny off a pint’ when in reality the 2024 Budget forced the price of an average pint up by 30p-40p. Instead, please support pubs and publicans, with measures that will actually help them get through this crisis – and enable them to avoid being forced to raise prices for customers as last year’s Budget did.

We commend the letter, spearheaded by Emma Lewell MP, calling for direct support in the form of a VAT cut, lower business rates in the form of larger discounts for hospitality sites in England worth under £500,000, and scrap the proposed surcharge for larger venues.

We are asking you to listen both to publicans and to the many MPs calling for direct support, which is what pubs desperately need. It is clear that there is an overwhelmingly majority of MPs from all parties who want to see pubs supported in this Budget. We really hope you will listen and act.

What you and the Government need to do to save pubs and support them through this crisis

We are publicans from all over the UK, so we urge you to introduce some measures that will help pubs all over the UK, which means reducing National Insurance contributions and a cut in VAT. Whilst we also urge you to lower business rates/increase discounts, this doesn’t affect pubs in Scotland or Northern Ireland, so we do implore you to support all pubs in Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

We urge you to give pubs meaningful direct support through the following measures:

• Overhauling business rates and replacing the unfair “Fair Maintainable Trade” model with a fair system, at the same time as tackling the discrepancy that sees online businesses pay much less.
  
  
• Reducing National Insurance contributions for pubs and other small business, including extending youth and return-to-work exemptions and scrapping the lowering of NI thresholds that penalise small employers who often employ staff in part-time entry-level jobs.
  
  
• Tackling energy costs to stop profiteering and unfair treatment of small businesses by energy companies.
  
  
• Cutting VAT on hospitality to 5% covering all pub sales (food and drink – it must include beer and other alcoholic drinks or it will not support thousands of important ‘wet-led’ pubs).
  
  
• We also urge you to commission a study into Small Retailers’ (VAT) Relief, which would see smaller independent businesses pay a lower level of VAT than larger corporations, to maintain the vibrancy of high streets and the diversity of consumer choice. This also avoids the problem with a general VAT cut for hospitality, which otherwise provides a huge tax break to the likes of McDonalds and KFC, which is clearly not an appropriate use of tax relief.
  
  
• Ending exploitative pubco practices through a strengthened Pubs Code and reform of the tie to stop abuse and allow publicans to trade freely with small brewers, giving consumers better choice.

We hope that the Scottish Government, Welsh Assembly and will also follow suit with some direct support for pubs, when this is within their remit – but you need to take the lead on 26th November, if you genuinely care about our world famous pubs and the people who run them.

Please listen & ACT: Provide some direct support to get us through the cost-of-living crisis

Every pub closure (temporary and permanent) destroys jobs, weakens communities and cuts tax revenue. Pubs are small businesses rooted in their local communities and they are crucial to local economies as well as creating real growth, unlike the global giants who budget-after-budget pocket beer duty windfalls.

Without urgent direct support in this Budget, more pubs will close for good; taking with them many livelihoods and jobs, but also local identity and a key part of our heritage and cultural identity.

We urge you to listen to your parliamentary colleagues like Emma Lewell on this issue, to publicans and to organisations like the Campaign for Pubs that actually represent the views and policies of pubs and publicans – and stop listening only to the voice of the big corporates.

We implore you to listen and to respond with a package of direct support for pubs and publicans – and ignore calls for cuts to beer duty, which do not help pubs or customers and instead gives giant foreign brewers and offshore pubcos a multimillion pound tax break, something completely unjustifiable with the strains on the public finances.

We hope that this year we can actually raise a glass to you and the Government, by providing meaningful support to the UK’s world famous pubs to get them through this cost-of-living crisis.

Yours sincerely,

Paul Crossman, The Swan, Slip Inn and Volunteer Arms, York
Dawn Hopkins, Rose Pub and Deli, Norwich
Lee Worsley, Coach House Inn, Winterbourne Abbas and Kings Arms, Portesham
Dave Law, Eagle Ale House, Battersea
Morag Douglas, The Star, Burntisland