My column printed in the Whitehaven News on the 5th February 2025 and the Times and Star on the 6th February 2025.
Throughout my time as an MP, I was proud to support our local pubs. I cut my teeth in the world of work in pubs and spent the next 15 years with a foot in the trade in one way or another.
Pubs are more than just alehouses - in rural communities like ours they’re community hubs, and often the centre of village life. We saw during the recent Storm Eowyn how pubs stood up to offer shelter, food and facilities to those who went days without power.
I was proud to be part of a government who protected and supported pubs, and who saved so many pubs with the Community Ownership Fund, allowing communities to buy village pubs that were threatened with closure.
I was pleased to be able to support community groups to bid into that fund, two of which – the Black Lion in Ireby and the Miners Arms in Nenthead – have had the rug pulled from under them when this disastrous Labour government abruptly ended the Fund without warning, consultation, or any replacement. Those pub campaigns garnered the support of the Labour MP as a candidate, but he’s gone strangely silent on this as on so many other matters.
I never thought for a minute that a Labour government would go after our pensioners, taking the Winter Fuel Allowance from thousands of local struggling pensioners, or that they would see working people as a target to raise taxes to pay off their trade union donors.
I did think a Labour government would be disastrous economically, as they always are. But I didn’t think that would mean attacking our rural communities – be that taxing rural farming families out of existence or creating a world in which our pubs will struggle to survive.
The fallout from Rachel Reeves’ budget continues. The economy teetering on the edge of recession means that people are preparing to try and cushion the impact and are not spending like they did. Visits to the local pub or restaurant will be one of the first things to take a hit.
Not only will our local pubs have to deal with that alongside the new National Insurance ‘jobs tax’, but also yet another broken Labour manifesto pledge.
The manifesto pledged: “Labour will replace the business rates system……… This new system will level the playing field between the high street and online giants”. But instead, business rates are going up.
The Conservative Government introduced an extra business rate relief for retail, hospitality and leisure businesses in England. In 2024-25, this is worth 75% off bills.
But from April, this relief is being cut drastically. The 320 pubs in Cumberland will see their average bill more than double, increasing by 140%. Many will be unable to absorb that on top of so many other attacks from government policy.
Their silence is deafening, but it’s time for our MPs to stand up for our rural communities and Save Our Local.
