Beer duty call in SIBA Budget submission

Its Budget submission highlights the success of the Government’s investment in the local brewing sector through Progressive Beer Duty (Small Brewers Duty), and highlights the disastrous consequences of its disinvestment through the taxation of beer.

SIBA chairman Keith Bott said: “Once again, our submission to the Treasury points to the positive impact of SBR: local beer volumes are in growth and local brewers are investing to meet this growing demand, creating jobs and making a significant contribution to their local economy.

“However, the Government’s beer taxation policies will, if unchecked, undo all the good created by SBR. For local brewing to thrive, so must pubs: 82% of our members’ production is draught beer.

"Yet the very existence of this vital route to market is threatened by successive hikes in duty that are rapidly turning a pint of beer into an unaffordable luxury – and encouraging drinkers away from a low-alcohol drink, enjoyed in the controlled environment of the pub, towards higher ABV drinks, consumed in unlicensed and unsupervised premises.

“The Government appears to want its cake and eat it, but the truth is that a flourishing local brewing sector, making a sustainable contribution to local and national economies, has to go hand in hand with a similarly prospering pub industry.”

At SIBA’s quarterly council meeting, its 21 trustees were armed with copies of ‘The Beer Story’, a leaflet produced with the British Beer & Pub Association and CAMRA, and other materials to help them to engage their local MPs and press. All SIBA brewers are being tasked to ask their local MP to write to the Treasury about beer taxation.

• SIBA brewers employ directly approximately 4,000 full-time (or full-time equivalent) people

• Each job in brewing generates an estimated 21 jobs across the supply and distribution chain

• Smaller brewers are more labour-intensive than larger producers - SIBA members average one job per 500 hectolitres, compared to one per 3,000 hectolitres in the industry overall

• In five years the headline rate of beer duty has risen by more than 35%

• The duty escalator on beer forces on-trade prices to rise, encourages cut-price off-trade purchasing, and is thus hastening pub closures

• Despite falling beer consumption in the UK, we contribute 40% of the total beer excise revenue raised by 27 EU nations, whilst accounting for only 13% of total EU beer volumes

• Overall revenue is reduced by falling on-trade employment and higher consequent social security payments, and by lower VAT returns from cheap supermarket sales