Manuela Perteghella

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Hobhouse. I thank the hon. Member for Meriden and Solihull East (Saqib Bhatti) for securing this important and timely debate. I want to put on record that I am an officer of the all-party parliamentary group for hospitality and tourism. In my constituency, pubs are a central part of our local economy and job creation. The rural pub is the beating heart of village life. Domestic and international tourists alike flock to our array of historical pubs and alehouses to drink a crisp pint in a picturesque setting, and it goes without saying that we locals like them very much too. I have many such pubs in my constituency—too many to name—all fantastic places to eat, drink and socialise. That reality is threatened, however, by the monumental challenges faced by all hospitality businesses in recent years. The local pub, once a staple of every town and village, is now an endangered species. In Stratford-on-Avon treasured, long-standing pubs are on the brink of closing. In rural, often isolated areas, the village pub is the only community infrastructure still standing after the school, the post office and the local shop have all closed. It is where quiz nights and coffee mornings are held, and where social life happens. Despite their social and economic value to the community, our rural pubs are firefighting on all fronts. One such pub is the Golden Cross in Ardens Grafton, a cherished 18th-century, family-run pub situated in the heart of the pretty south Warwickshire countryside, within easy reach of the town of Stratford-upon-Avon, and with views of the Vale of Evesham and the Cotswolds. A more perfect setting for a profitable pub could not be imagined but, almost with the feeling of inevitability, it closed its doors for the very last time earlier this month. That has been a heartbreaking decision for the owners, who did everything they could to avoid closure; but with rising operating costs, increased wage bills, higher national insurance contributions, escalating energy costs and supplier price increases, they simply had no other choice but to say goodbye to the business that supported the livelihoods of their families and community life. Elsewhere in my constituency it was only through the intervention of local residents and of the charity Plunkett UK that the Fox at Loxley was saved from the same fate and became a community-owned pub. When will the Government intervene to save our pubs and our wider hospitality industry? The Government’s policies should be providing the platform for our pubs and hospitality businesses to thrive. The emergency pub relief has been eaten up by cuts in relief and steep increases in rateable values from April 2026. Business rates must be reviewed and made fairer. For a Government who claim that their main objective is economic growth, it boggles the mind that they thought the way to achieve that was to increase employer national insurance contributions—a measure that disproportionately impacts hospitality, raising costs for part-time staff and hitting small and medium-sized businesses the hardest. That is why I and my Liberal Democrat colleagues have been calling on the Government to exempt hospitality small and medium-sized enterprises from the employer national insurance contributions increase, and to cut the VAT on hospitality businesses by 5%. In other countries of Europe, the hospitality sector has 10% VAT, which means that it can grow and employ more people. Rural pubs are among the providers of first jobs for our young generations, forming the foundation of a working life where they learn so many skills each day. I do not know what evidence the Government need to see before they believe that our pubs are at crisis point and that another U-turn is necessary. I hope that the Minister will take the Golden Cross in my constituency as firm evidence that the current situation is entirely unsustainable for our pubs and that Government intervention is needed now to save our pubs from extinction.