Autumn Budget ignores UK spirits industry’s pleas
The UK chancellor Rachel Reeves has announced her autumn Budget, confirming that there will be no changes to the alcohol duty rises revealed in last year’s statement.
The spirits industry has been calling on the government to freeze alcohol duty over the next few years, however it appears these pleas have fallen on deaf ears.
Alcohol duty has been linked to the Retail Price Index (RPI) since February 2025 – a decision made by Reeves in her first budget and described as a “betrayal” for the Scotch industry.
Although today’s (26 November) Budget made no mention of alcohol duty, the Office for Budget Responsibility published a report calculating the impacts of Reeves’ new statement. In it, it claims that alcohol duty receipts are expected to raise £12 billion (US$15.8bn) in 2025-26, a 5.1% decrease compared with the year before.
It anticipates receipts will increase by 3.4% each year following, reaching £14bn by 2030-31. This will be due to increases in the duty rate, which “offset the impact of lower in-year and forecast consumption”.
It forecasts that the volume of alcohol sold will decline by 6.4% this year and remain broadly flat from 2027-28.
The Scotch Whisky Association (SWA) has claimed that the 10.1% excise duty increase in 2023 led to greater borrowing costs, inflation and less money for the Treasury.
The view for the on-trade
Reeves announced a “package of regulatory changes”, which had been called for by UKHospitality and the British Retail Consortium.
As part of these, she said she will “support the Great British pub through our new national licensing framework, encouraging councils to back our pubs and to back late-night venues with greater freedoms.”
Details of licensing changes were teased last month, with trade bodies such as UKHospitality and the Night Time Industries Association (NTIA) contributing to a taskforce.
Elsewhere in the Budget, Reeve promised a reform of the business rates system. She will introduce a permanently lower tax rate for more than 750,000 retail, hospitality and leisure properties. She claimed this will be the “lowest rate since 1991”, and will be paid for through higher rates of properties worth more than £500,000.
This policy was teased in September, with new multipliers to be confirmed shortly.
She also introduced a package of support worth £4.3bn over the next three years for properties of any size seeing a “large increase” in their business rates bill.
Related news
Buffalo Trace brings 2025 Antique Collection to UK
