In a country which is usually covered in cloud, most of us want to make the most of the sunny weather when it is here. Yet whether it comes to eating alfresco, drinking a pub pint on the village green, or, indeed, playing beer pong in a pub garden, the state says ‘no’. Well, I say, no more. The post Charles Amos: From the table tax to alcohol licensing, the state is spoiling fun in the sun appeared first on Conservative Home.
Charles Amos is a PhD student in political philosophy alongside working in the haulage industry. He writes The Musing Individualist Substack in his spare time.
Recently I went to a pub in Witney and since it was such a sunny day, I decided to ask whether I could take my pint of lager shandy out onto the town’s green.
Unfortunately, I was denied this freedom due to alcohol licensing. It might not seem like much, but this type of pettifogging regulation is ubiquitous across pubs and restaurants and it is spoiling the sunny weather for punters across the land. The justification for alcohol licensing, table taxes and smoking bans rooted in opposing spillover costs is nothing but an excuse for councils to rinse hospitality and push people about. It must stop.
The list of pettifogging regulations applying to British pubs and restaurants is endless.
There is the table tax which costs businesses up to £350 a year to put tables on the payment, after an initial cost of up to £500; then, there is the whole system of alcohol licensing which bans many pubs from having drinks taken off the premises, 16 and 17 year olds from ordering alcohol alone, discounted drinks below their duty and VAT rate, and, drinking games. On top of this is food hygiene regulations which are so excessive today that absent an employee being trained, they can’t even serve a bowl of soup out of a can. Since 2007, we’ve also had the draconian smoking ban in pubs, and, this looks to be followed by a ban on vapes too. And it was only last year politicians (admittedly unsuccessfully) tried to ban smoking in pub gardens too.
The general justification for all of this, according to the Licensing Act 2003, is to stop crime, public nuisances and dangers to children, or, spillover costs for short. This is questionable for at least two reasons. First, the spillovers often don’t exist; and, second, where they do exist, the fines should be on the individual who creates the spillover, not the business. Consider taking a pint off the premises in a plastic cup. Where is the spillover? If anything, by reducing down the density of the pub in hot weather, it reduces the chances of a fight, i.e., a negative externality. Plus, isn’t it strange I can buy a pint from the off license next to the pub and drink it outside, but I can’t buy a pint from the pub and drink it in the same outside space. Yet some pubs, all the same, can have drinks taken off their premises if they have got the right licence. Where is the spillover in selling to 16 and 17 year olds either. If they can drink privately from 5 years old under adult supervision, why not in the great place of a pub too, which, I’d note, is not legally allowed to serve drunk people of any age.
Banning drinking games and discounted drinks makes more sense insofar as they can clearly create public disorder.
Nevertheless, according to Christopher Snowdon, the negative externality from drinking is about £5.46bn in today’s prices, while alcohol duty alone raises £12.5bn, meaning, the negative externality is already internalised. Indeed, from an economic point of view, there is too little drinking today as it is excessively taxed. Perhaps advocates of alcohol licensing aren’t interested in the net effect of alcohol licensing and duty, but, instead, ensuring each and every public nuisance is stopped. This is obviously wrongheaded and would probably necessitate closing down all pubs because they inevitably create some public nuisances. But fundamentally we need to question the idea the publican should be responsible for the behaviour of his customers.
In the same way that getting someone wound up in an argument doesn’t make you liable for them then punching someone in the face out of anger, analogously, nor should a publican creating the condition which make fights more likely be liable either. Pre-emptively banning drinking games such as beer pong and discounted drinks on the basis the publican should be liable for customers’ alcohol aided misbehaviour is seriously misplaced then. Ultimately, individuals are morally responsible for themselves. Following from this they should be able to judge whether or not the establishment they frequent can do without food hygiene training too, enabling mostly wet pubs to serve sandwiches and soup without having to put every one of their sometimes very large rotas through training. On the margin, this extra training cost often means no sandwiches for some.
In a country which is usually covered in cloud, most of us want to make the most of the sunny weather when it is here. Yet whether it comes to eating alfresco, drinking a pub pint on the village green, or, indeed, playing beer pong in a pub garden, the state says ‘no’. Well, I say, no more.
Britons should be free to have fun in the sun; pettifogging politicians of gloom be damned!
The post Charles Amos: From the table tax to alcohol licensing, the state is spoiling fun in the sun appeared first on Conservative Home.
