The BBC’s economics editor, Hugh Pym, picked a Cardiff pub to illustrate his story about the rise in VAT last night.
Pym called in at The Cricketers in Cathedral Road, Cardiff, to discuss the impact of a VAT rise which has seen the average price of a pint rise by 6p nationwide. He interviewed Simon Buckley, chief executive of the West Wales Evan-Evans brewery and owner of The Cricketers and six other pubs and hotels in Wales.
Mr Buckley said: “There will come a moment very shortly when the consumer will say we cannot afford to go to the pub. And when you combine VAT with the fuel cost and the cost of getting to rural pubs, I wonder whether the regional pub – the regional rural pub – has a future.”
The interview was screened on the BBC’s Six and Ten o Clock news programmes. You can see the interview again on the BBC’s iPlayer (About three minutes in) –
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00x83ww/BBC_News_at_Six_04_01_2011/
