Brewer freezes beer prices

A Middleton brewer has promised to freeze beer prices during the whole of 2010.

The promise has been made by William Lees-Jones, the managing director of J W Lees, based in Middleton Junction.

He said: “We are putting our customers and licensees first and are pledging that we will not put up the wholesale or retail price of any JW Lees beers in 2010.

“Pubs must not price themselves out of the market. Britain’s brewers and publicans have had to deal with a series of bad-news events for pubs over the last few years, including the disastrous Licensing Act, the ban on smoking in public places, three non-existent summers, the ridiculous duty-escalator tax and, most recently, the problems caused by the snow.

“It has been a tough decision for us to freeze our prices since we will be bucking the market at a time when our competitors are putting their prices up.

“But we feel that it would be cynical to hit our customers with increases since we have benefited this year from reductions in the price that we pay for both our raw materials and energy.

“We have also had a pay freeze in our business for 18 months.

“We want to give our customers value-for-money and are prepared to put our money where our mouth is by holding our prices on JW Lees beers.”

However, Mr Lees-Jones added the proviso that it can only uphold the price promise in the areas that it controls — and the company would have to increase its prices if the government chooses to make any further increases in either beer duty or VAT.

For every pint of JW Lees cask bitter that JW Lees sells at £2.10 there is 31p paid in VAT and 37p in beer duty, with tax representing 33 per cent of the cost of a pint.

UK beer duty is now the third highest in Europe. British drinkers are taxed at nine times the rate of that in Germany at a time when UK pubs are closing at a rate of more than 50 a week.