On the 200th birthday of the pint and after Euro 2024, let’s pour beer duty down the sink
As you’re enjoying the Euro 2024 Championships in Germany don’t forget how much the taxman is hitting each and every pint you drink. So on the 200th birthday of the pint measurement it is time the political parties help us all out, on both sides of the bar, writes Emma McClarkin OBE, British Beer and Pub Association CEO.
Fans commiserating with a pint Scotland’s loss against Germany on Friday night were paying nearly 12 times more duty on their beer than the Euro 24 host nation. When England played Serbia last night, the story of inequity was similar. Because the fact is that UK beer duty is the second-highest among EU countries (behind only Finland).
To celebrate the Euros, my organisation – whose members brew 90 per cent of the beer sold in the UK and between them own over 20,000 pubs – designed, and sent out to Prospective Parliamentary Candidates, a wall chart. Morning Wire offices received one too.
Stark beer duty reading
As well as being fun to fill in as the tournament, and hopefully Scotland and England, progress, the wall chart also makes a serious point. It gives the comparative duty paid in the UK versus all our Euros competitors and it makes stark reading: In the UK, 54.2p in every pint of beer goes to the taxman compared to just 4.6p in Germany and 12.7p in Serbia.
Which is why on Friday I wrote a letter to each of the leaders of the three main political parties asking for an immediate cut in beer duty. The letter was signed by 80 of the UK’s top breweries and pubs including Heineken, Budweiser, Greene King, Stonegate, JD Wetherspoon and Diageo.
The Government has frozen beer duty since 2020 and the current rate is in place until February 2025 but we need an actual cut as a first step towards bringing the UK duty down to the European average of 5p.
Like the rest of the hospitality industry, our sector has been badly hit by Covid-19 and the cost of living crisis so we are asking for additional measures to be implemented on business rates.
Pubs alone pay £400m a year in business rates – almost 3 per cent of the total amount raised while bringing in just 0.5 per cent of turnover across all UK businesses. Until an urgent radical reform to business rates is implemented the current 75 per cent relief in England is a lifeline without which many more pubs would close.
Euro 2024 incentive
The BBPA would also like VAT on non-alcoholic drinks and food sold in pubs to be removed to to level the playing field with retail, provide long term certainty and boost tourism.
Today the pint measurement celebrates its 200th birthday. In this anniversary year, the cost of the nation’s favourite measurement – which came into being on June 17 1824 – is on average 5.6 per cent more than in 2023, according to the ONS. At a national average of £4.80, it’s risen by over 60 per cent since 2010 – and that’s with duty freezes.
Beyond the Euros, the price can also tell us a lot about our place in the world compared to major European capital cities – Madrid, Paris, Vienna – where a pint clocks in at less than £4, well under the £6.45 it costs the average Londoner.
This is an election that will be decided by punters, and they don’t just want to see which candidate can pull the best pint in their favourite local, they want to see who will make pints affordable when they leave the campaign trail behind.
Nation of punters
Most people – and football fans over this next month – feel a struggling UK economy with every bone in their body. They don’t want to experience that feeling in one of the few places we have always been able to celebrate, commiserate and quench our thirst.
At heart, we’re a nation of punters. We don’t like to go out less, spend less, or live our lives in miniature. Between the pandemic and the cost of living, we’ve all had to make huge sacrifices over the past five years.
The prize for the next government will be to get the economic framework right which, in turn, will create an industry that’s no longer struggling but one that is key to High Street revitalisation and local economic growth.
If the new Chancellor really wants to give the pint a 200th birthday worth celebrating and bring relief where it counts they surely know how and where to do this: at the pump.