More Kent pubs will be forced to close after the latest tax hike on alcohol, a brewery boss has warned.

Jonathan Neame, chief executive of Shepherd Neame, the 300-year old Faversham brewer, was incensed by the Chancellor’s pre-budget report (PBR) that again raises excise duty on drink.

Duty on a pint of beer increases by at least 3p, with 13p on a bottle of wine and 53p on a bottle of spirits. These are the latest of five tax rises already imposed or planned.

The PBR was designed to help families and small businesses, Mr Neame said, yet the tax rise threatened to drive family-run pubs out of business.

"It’s a major kick in the teeth for all those hard-working families up and down Kent," he said. "This is the sort of policy that is designed to wipe our industry out."

And it made no sense because higher prices in the pub led to a lower overall tax take. It also drove more people to buy alcohol in supermarkets and consume it in places that were not as well regulated as pubs.

Thirty-six pubs a week are going out of business, with the Government losing tax revenue from their demise. Mr Neame said it was "absolutely inevitable" that more pubs would close after the latest increase.

Government hostility to pubs was based on myths, he claimed – that consumption was going up, that alcohol-related violence was rising, and that alcohol was bad for you. None of these was true, he insisted.

Pubs, brewers, winemakers, cider-makers were all being penalised because of the activities of “a few idiots” who went binge drinking in town centres.

People went to the pub to socialise, to enjoy a sense of community, to have a nice meal, and to raise funds for good causes.

"They don’t go to get drunk," Mr Neame said. "The Government has moved to a position where it regards pubs as a social problem on the one hand and a tax collection point on the other and they are fundamentally wrong."

Duty was going up just as brewers faced higher cost of raw materials, utilities and other inputs. The market was already tough as consumers tightened their belts in the economic downturn.

"If they [the Government] continue with this policy, we will look back in five years time with thousands of pubs shut and say this government has perpetrated upon the British people an act of gross cultural vandalism."

Mr Neame urged the people of Kent to go to their local, support it and get in touch with their MP and tell them that the Government was wrong.