By Shelagh Young, Engagement Lead, David Hume Institute

5th September 2022

The claim that thousands of pubs face closure without government support to help with rocketing energy bills ought to have the UK Government worried. In last year’s Hospitality Strategy it championed the British pub as the “hub which unites our communities” and described the hospitality sector as having helped kick-start the economy after the global financial crisis. 

Instead of demonstrating any meaningful concern about these heartwarming sources of “community spirit” going down the drain like last week’s stale beer, the UK Government has gone as quiet as a bunch of after hours drinkers hiding from the police. Or perhaps as quiet as a typical snug now that 80% of people living in Scotland have cut their spending on non-essentials and leisure. 

The truth, as revealed last week in Understanding Scotland: economy survey, produced by the David Hume Institute in collaboration with the Diffley Partnership, is that most of us are anxious about the current and anticipated cost of living increases and the majority are already changing their behaviour as a result. The hospitality industry is threatened by higher costs but also by lower revenues as people without enough money, and the many who fear they soon will be, reduce or stop spending on leisure activities.

Nine in ten people in Scotland think the cost of living crisis will get worse before it gets better and three in ten are losing sleep due to financial stress with many others skipping meals and dipping into savings just to get by. People are also becoming harsh judges of government, both UK and Scottish, with  89% and 73% respectively, saying that they have done too little to help.

Measures such as furlough, tax cuts and other changes helped to protect the hospitality sector when Covid-19 struck. In providing paid jobs, a social place to linger and, perhaps, escape a chilly home, pubs and other hospitality businesses were considered to be helping meet several public policy goals including reducing social isolation and loneliness and making an important economic contribution to communities.

Does that no longer matter? Are so-called “warm spaces”, the rebadging of local libraries, community centres and other accessible, heated community spaces as the last defence against death by hypothermia, going to be the new way of uniting communities? If so, what might emerge from people’s sobering collective realisation that this is all there is?

Will Liz Truss’s expected announcements tomorrow help desperate local businesses? Surely the question should not be “can we afford” to protect pubs and the wider hospitality sector by making sure they can pay their bills and people have enough money to keep using them but “can we afford not to”?