Pubs and restaurants warn they face being wiped out and accuse SNP of ignoring businesses

Scotland's hospitality firms face being wiped out by Nicola Sturgeon's "illogical" five-tier lockdown system unless her government stops ignoring a blueprint that could save them, industry leaders said on Thursday.

Stephen Montgomery, of the Scottish Hospitality Group (SHG), told The Daily Telegraph that the SNP administration must start heeding proposals to help pubs and restaurants stay solvent, which the industry presented on Monday last week.

None were included in Ms Sturgeon's five levels of restrictions, unveiled three days later, and he expressed frustration that a minister with whom the industry held talks appeared not to have even read them.

Mr Montgomery and Nic Wood, whose Signature group includes 22 pubs, warned the SNP government did not understand the crisis facing the industry or that "there will be nothing left" if ministers do not give them a "seat at the table" with input into key decisions.

Although the Chancellor has extended furlough until March, they said Scottish Government support covers only a small proportion of running costs such as rent, leaving the industry to cover millions of pounds of losses.

Highlighting some of the anomalies created by the new regime, Mr Montgomery, who owns a hotel in Lockerbie, said his guests were now getting round an alcohol ban by disappearing to their rooms between meal courses to "glug" bottles of wine.

But Mr Wood said the main problem was the "ludicrous" rule restricting pub opening hours to between 12pm and 6pm in Level 3 areas, which cover most of the population including the Central Belt.

He said this meant pubs could not serve evening meals, as their final sittings have to start at 4.30pm, and most pubs and restaurants could not afford to reopen this Monday when the five-tier system was launched.

The industry blueprint had instead proposed allowing pubs and restaurants to open until 10pm with no alcohol served and customers only allowed to stay two hours for a meal.

Prior to the five-tier system coming into effect, licensed premises in the Central Belt had previously been shut down for more than three weeks in a 'circuit breaker' lockdown.

Industry groups last month launched a joint legal action aimed at overturning the restrictions by preparing a petition for judicial review, claiming the heavy curbs on their activities were unjustified and not backed up by sufficient scientific evidence.

Under the current regime, pubs and restaurants in Level 3 areas must shut by 6pm and cannot serve alcohol while those in Level 2 can serve alcohol with a meal until 8pm. Those in Level 1 areas, covering the islands, Moray and the Highlands, can open until 10.30pm.

Mr Wood warned there would be two dire consequences if the tiers were not "tweaked" to take account of Scotland's cold winters, the first of which will be mass job losses among young people.

He continued: "The number two thing is the hospitality industry will not be here. Quite simply, there's a huge amount of people who if the governments do not step up and realise the issues that they are facing right now, they will have no industry at the end of this whatsoever.

"Even if you get to a point where tourists come back to Scotland, there will be no hospitality for them to experience because there will be nothing left."

Urging SNP ministers to "view the bigger picture", he said he understood the First Minister's public health advice was "absolutely paramount" but argued a sensible "middle ground" could be found to save jobs "if they can find a way to actually listen to us."

He also said they were not providing enough support to "wet-led" firms - pubs and bars that rely on drinks rather than food sales - to "hibernate" until the pandemic is over rather than go bust.

The SHG has calculated its operators, which operate more than 200 venues, received £415,000 of government support during the recent 'circuit breaker' but it cost them £3.5 million to close.

On average, it cost them £5,783 per week to keep each venue closed but they received grant support of only £693, leaving a shortfall of £5,089 on top of one-off shutdown costs.

Between July and the end of September the group said its members served more than 1.8 million companies but was notified by public health authorities of only 17 Covid cases.

In a direct message to ministers, Mr Montgomery said: "If they don't start talking to us, we're not going to come out of this and that's the bottom line and it's plain to see."

Highlighting the hotel alcohol ban, he added: "Why not allow a resident, which is their place of home for the weekend or the night, a beer or a wine with their meal? It's absolutely senseless."

A Scottish Government spokesman said: "“We fully understand the challenges facing the hospitality sector as we look to balance measures to suppress the virus and protect lives with keeping businesses open and trading viably.

“No one wants the restrictions in place a moment longer than necessary and we will continue to build on our constructive dialogue with the industry and listen to their concerns as we move into the new levels framework."