Hospitality Industry

Dear constituent,

Thank you for contacting me about support for the UK in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

I appreciate the incredibly difficult situation hospitality businesses are facing. The sector has been one of the hardest hit by the pandemic with many more businesses than in other sectors being forced to close due to public health restrictions and having to remain closed for longer. Even as pubs, restaurants and other hospitality businesses that are permitted to re-open start trading again, they will continue to face restrictions that will have a big impact on their revenue – the Government’s scientific assessment, for example, estimates that the industry will lose 25-40% of revenue even with the change to a one-metre social distancing rule. This translates into a major risk to hundreds of thousands of jobs.

I therefore agree that the Government must do more to support the industry. In particular, it needs to abandon its one-size-fits-all approach to support. Economic support must be maintained in line with the public health restrictions specific sectors face. Workers in at-risk sectors like hospitality should not be treated in the same way as those in sectors already back to full capacity. Unless we take a targeted approach, including an extension to the furlough scheme for specific sectors such as hospitality, we face the danger of a wave of redundancies.

I also believe we need to address gaps in the existing support, such as the exclusion from grant funding of businesses with a rateable value of over £51,000. According to UK Hospitality, 71% of hospitality activity takes place in premises above this threshold. Extending business support grants to businesses with higher rateable values could make a difference to tens of thousands of pubs, restaurants and other businesses.

More widely, I believe the Government must bring forward an emergency budget this summer. It needs to stimulate economic demand without delay and focus above all on jobs – getting people back to work, protecting existing employment and creating new roles. The cost of providing continued support to previously viable businesses that are now at risk is far outweighed by the cost of doing nothing, which would leave tens of thousands of businesses to go bust, with employees pushed into unemployment and our high streets left vacant.

Thank you once again for contacting me.

Yours sincerely,

Peter Dowd MP