Many bars and restaurants say closure is inevitable following the recent Labour budget

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Owners of some bars and restaurants say they fear for their future following the recent Labour budget. They cite increase costs from taxes, wage rises and environmental compliance.

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00:00Well, it's always very difficult because it depends who you believe.

00:04Quite clearly, the critics say that taxes did not need to rise, but the government of

00:09currently, the Labour administration under Keir Starmer, they claim to have found the

00:1422 billion black hole, which, of course, is still somewhat contentious.

00:19If we give the government the benefit of the doubt, then that has to be filled, so it has

00:23to come from somewhere.

00:24Now, of course, the difficulty is, who does this go to?

00:27And of course, the argument in Labour is that the board of shoulders should bear this load,

00:31as it were.

00:32Those are the wealthiest.

00:33Now, indeed, coming to the hospitality industry in particular, there is this difficulty because

00:38traditionally, they don't pay the highest wages.

00:42It's often very short term and casual.

00:44There's the issue then of increasing national insurance or the employer's national insurance,

00:49but also at the same time, which is kind of forgotten, dropping the threshold as to when

00:54you have to start it.

00:56So it's picking up a lot more people than it would have done.

00:58So for Labour, it might be paying at the start of their period in power, but gain later as

01:03some economic benefits develop.

01:05Well, I mean, if we again take the explanation, they're sort of fixing the foundation.

01:11So yeah, OK, they've got four and a half years to get this right.

01:14But the difficulty is that sort of given that things are sort of not, they were never going

01:19to increase as quickly or improve as quickly as they might have hoped or some might have

01:23hoped.

01:24We're going to have to sort of see some sort of, as I say, improving the economy and the

01:28feel good factor, because that's what people sort of vote for.

01:31And what about the response from the opposition?

01:33It feels very much like reform are getting all the headlines.

01:37The Conservatives, let's face it, they were pretty enfeebled that, you know, they've gone

01:40through some sort of pretty dreadful times and sort of umpteen sort of changes of leadership.

01:45What we've got to hope for, you know, for all of our sake, regardless of the politics,

01:49is that sort of the economy does improve, because if it starts to improve, we all feel

01:52better.

01:53And if there's more money going into the economy, we can then sort of start to fix the sort

01:56of the vital services that we all so depend upon.

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