How the Treasury can help pubs and restaurants survive the Covid-19 lockdowns crisis

Is there anything worse on one’s once-a-day stroll than gazing through the windows of your favourite pubs and restaurants? The lights twinkle but there’s noone home.

You might say the same for the folks in government making policy for the sector during the Covid crisis.

Figures collected by this paper today show more than 800 chain outlets have closed during the pandemic. Treasury policies are largely to blame.

Yes, furlough has been excellent, as has the interim relief on business rates and VAT, but where’s the holistic strategy to save the sector or its hundreds of thousands of jobs?

We need a plan for the short, medium and long term, and it should look something like this.

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The Treasury should reinstate the broken promise to pay firms £1000 per head to retain staff. Even if a worker is furloughed, employers still have to fund their pension, NI and PAYE. With zero revenues, that kills businesses.

Then, extend the relief on ruinously high VAT and rates for the rest of the year. A decision on that now will reassure companies, and their banks, they will be able to rebuild when lockdowns end.

Further out, review the whole sector’s taxes. For a decade and more, it has been a Treasury cashcow. The duty escalator on booze means taxes soar every year. The national minimum wage always goes up beyond inflation. This puts off investors and lenders and threatens firms’ futures.

Let’s have some joined-up, intelligent thinking to give businesses, and their customers, some much-needed hope.

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