by business editor Trevor Sturgess

The Chancellor’s decision to raise alcohol duty has been denounced as idiocy that will hasten the closure of pubs and threaten thousands of job losses.

Jonathan Neame, chief executive Shepherd Neame, the 400-year old Faversham brewery, was scathing about George Osborne’s decision to maintain the previous government’s duty escalator.

He warned that it would push up the price of a pint by at least 10p and flew in the face of all the industry’s arguments. It would further damage the UK hospitality sector in the run-up to the Olympic Games in 2012.

Pubs had been closing at an alarming rate, costing tens of thousands of jobs, and this would continue across Kent and the UK because the Government failed to understand the importance of successful pubs to the UK and regional economy.

“Every pound the Chancellor takes off us is a pound less that our licensees and ourselves can’t invest in improving facilities and the consumer experience and driving our business forward,” he said. “My guess is that if the Government continues with this idiocy, there will be more pub closures during this parliament than since the Napoleonic Wars. This Government will go down as the destroyer of the hospitality sector unless it wakes up to the reality of its idotic policies.”

Beer had suffered a 33 per cent tax hike since 2008. The customer paid around £1 in tax and duty on every pint. Shepherd Neame paid £42m in tax last year out of sales of £100m. Beer consumption had fallen by 20 per cent since 2007 and tax yields had also dropped. Since the escalator came in, 4,000 pubs had closed in the UK, losing 40,000 jobs.

He said the hospitality sector was quick to create jobs after a recession. It employed 982,000 people and was the only sector that touched every part of the community. “Yet it’s the only sector in this Budget that has been singled out for punishment at a time when food, cereal and fuel inflation is rocketing. The consequence is that more pubs will close, the hospitality sector will become less competitive, at a time when we are going into the biggest showcase for 100 years for this country, and we will lose jobs. We now pay more excise duty than any other country in the world.”