Award-winning chef Tom Kerridge has called on the government to create a new ministry for hospitality (Alamy)
3 min read21 August
Chef and campaigner Tom Kerridge has said Prime Minister Andy Burnham should set up a new department for hospitality.
Speaking on the latest episode of PoliticsHome podcast The Rundown, the Michelin-starred restaurant owner said a “ministry of hospitality” would help recognise the industry’s importance to the wider economy at a time when it is under significant financial pressure.
”The biggest problem that we have is that a ministry of hospitality does not exist,” said Kerridge.
He argued that, as things stand, various parts of government “give an opinion on what should happen” to the industry but, as one of the country’s biggest employers, it needs a dedicated Whitehall department.
“There should be a civil service building somewhere around here where there are people who absolutely know what they’re talking about, that can sit there and represent the industry to government,” he added.
Kerridge said having a department responsible for hospitality could help ministers draft policy to prevent situations like the recent licensing row over so-called “vertical drinking” in the London borough of Westminster. The chef described the council’s contentious draft proposal to discourage people from drinking standing up as “nonsense”.
“It [the department] doesn’t need to be massive. It just needs to sit there within a building because it ties so many different things together, and governments would stop having ludicrous stories like that,” he added.
Kerridge is also campaigning for VAT to be reduced from 20 per cent to 10 per cent, and additional steps on business rates to reverse the trend of hospitality businesses closing.
Since entering No 10 a month ago, the Prime Minister has announced a 20 per cent cut to business rates from next April for pubs, social clubs and live music venues, while Housing Secretary Angela Rayner is changing planning policy to protect hospitality venues from being turned into offices or housing.
Kerridge said the steps were “positive” but “nowhere near close enough” to what the hospitality industry needs.
On VAT, he told the podcast: “Whether it’s 10 per cent straight away, whether it starts as 15 and then a year later it goes to 12.5 per cent, and then a year later it goes to 10 per cent, just something that shows we know, we care, we understand,” he said.
Kerridge added that the business rate system is “not fit for purpose” in its current form and something Chancellor John Healey should look to improve at the late-October Budget.
According to recent research by NIQ’s Hospitality Market Monitor, between 3 and 4 pubs and restaurants are closing every day in the UK due to rising costs.
The Rundown is presented by Alain Tolhurst, and is produced and edited by Ewan Cameron and Lulu Goad for Podot
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