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Public Houses

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I have seen examples of that situation, which has a bad effect. My sister has a bar in Spain, and when there is a world cup tournament on, or cricket, football or whatever it is, the takings rise greatly. If that facility cannot be made available by pubs in this country, for the reasons that my hon. Friend gives, it is a setback. I suggest that there should be no increase in alcohol tax in the Budget. I know that the Government are looking to get back the billions of pounds that the Prime Minister has spent on rescuing failing banks and now on effectively printing money, but I think that an increase would be counter-productive. Oxford Economics estimates that an increase would cost a further 75,000 jobs over the next two years, which is a lot of jobs. Those people would then be unemployed, and the situation would get worse. The tax should be frozen. Actually, I would like it to be reduced, particularly on beer. I do not suppose that the Government will do that, but the situation is certainly becoming urgent when 39 pubs a week are closing. If people continue to turn away from pubs, it will be counter-productive from a health point of view because supermarkets will fill the void in a dangerous way. I was pleased to hear the Prime Minister say recently, when there was a suggestion of a minimum price per unit of alcohol, that other methods should be chosen to counter the problems that are related perhaps to alcohol, but more particularly to people's bad behaviour. That is what we should put them down to. Yes, the low price of alcohol is fuelling the problems in certain places, but we should not lose sight of the fact that it is people's bad behaviour that is causing them. We would like to see, as all small businesses would, an end to the drip-drip regulation that affects all businesses, but small ones disproportionately. We need to allow diversification—perhaps post offices could be put in pubs—and we need a simplified planning system for smaller planning applications. I have said that mandatory rate relief should be considered, and there should not be any increase in business rates this year. As I said, the inflation figure is now nil anyway. I stand to be corrected, but I understand that the Government have not yet responded to the excellent report on the community pub inquiry produced by my hon. Friend and his team. Perhaps they could respond to the excellent suggestions in it. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say, and I thank him again for attending. Pubs are well worth saving, for the reasons that I have given—their economic value and their value to the community. To pinch a quotation from my hon. Friend's excellent report, the writer and one-time MP Hilaire Belloc said:""When you have lost your inns, drown your empty selves, for you will have lost the last of England."" I think he had it about right.