“Pubs and hospitality businesses in my seat of St Albans are really up against it”
Daisy Cooper PM spent two hours bobbing at the Economic Update on Wednesday 17 October in order to be able to raise the plight of hospitality businesses in St Albans with new chancellor Jeremy Hunt and call for more support.
In the Commons, she said: “Pubs and hospitality businesses in my seat of St Albans are really up against it. Suckerpunch is a bar that closed its doors just a couple of days ago because it can no longer continue.
“Others are clinging on until Christmas and we know that around the country hospitality businesses are saying that they are going to go into complete hibernation until the spring, and that means redundancies.
“Will the Chancellor confirm that he understands that hospitality is one of the sectors that is most affected and will therefore attract support, and will he look again at the broken business rates system, which is killing our pubs and high streets while letting multinationals off the hook?”
In response, Jeremy Hunt said: “Another of the promises I now vainly wish I had not made in the summer as to policies we should do is a fundamental review of business rates, so I have a great deal of sympathy for the hon. Member on that front and I will happily look at those issues.
“I do not want to promise we are going to make any progress in the next two weeks because there are so many other things we have to consider, but what she has said has been well heard—and I, too, congratulate her on her patience.”