Charlotte Cane

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Hobhouse. I congratulate the hon. Member for Meriden and Solihull East (Saqib Bhatti) on securing this debate. Ely and East Cambridgeshire is a very rural area, and in many of my villages the pub is the only place left for local people to gather, meet and socialise. According to the Campaign for Real Ale, we have lost or are at risk of losing 609 pubs since January this year, and 60 of those are definitely lost forever because they have been demolished or converted. My village of Reach nearly lost its pub back in 1999. The villagers bought it, and it is now run as a fully commercial business on a long lease, with the freehold belonging to the parish council. It sits at one end of Devil’s Dyke, so it has been renamed the Dyke’s End. It remains a very successful and popular pub. I regularly meet my publican network and the local CAMRA group, and they tell me about what pubs do to support community events and social interaction, combat loneliness and help with mental health, as well as providing young people with their first job and training them in communication and hospitality skills. But they are really struggling financially. National insurance, business rates and energy costs come up over and over again, which is why the Lib Dems are calling for a 5% cut on VAT for pubs, action to reduce their energy costs and the replacement of business rates. All of our communities and publicans deserve better support, but I would like to highlight two in my constituency. The Carpenters Arms in Soham was voted CAMRA’s rural pub of the year in 2024. It has an amazing array of real ales, a beautiful garden out the back and community events. It is a real part of that market town in my constituency. More recently, the Black Horse in Rampton has been voted CAMRA’s East Anglia cider pub of the year 2026. It has a whole wall full of different ciders. Hon. Members would have to visit regularly to try them all. One of them is Foxhay cider, which is made in Rampton using local apples, so the pub supports small local businesses as well. As we have heard, these small, rural pubs are also supporting the wonderful micro and small breweries, which need people who can take small amounts and get through it quickly before it goes off, as it has a shorter life than commercial beers. Our pubs really are the hubs of our communities, but if we continue to over-tax them, we will continue to lose them, with all the impact that will have on our local communities. Will the Minister commit to asking the Government to reduce those taxes and allow our pubs to thrive?