Spirits: Excise Duties
The question
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether she has made an assessment of the potential impact of spirits duty rates on the competitiveness of UK pubs comparted to pubs in Europe.
Answered by Dan Tomlinson
Alcohol duty is paid by producers, and is therefore not typically paid directly by pubs. Further, according to estimates derived from sales data collected on behalf of the Office for National Statistics, only around 15% of spirits are consumed on-trade.
At Autumn Budget 2025 the Chancellor confirmed that alcohol duty will be uprated on 1 February 2026 to maintain its current real-terms value.
An assessment of the impacts of decisions taken by the Chancellor at each Budget is published within the relevant Tax Impact and Information Note (TIIN). The TIIN for the inflation-linked uprating announced at the most recent Budget is available here:
There is significant variation in alcohol taxation policy amongst European countries. The World Health Organization recently published a comparison of alcohol taxes across the WHO European Region, which can be found here: https://www.who.int/europe/publications/i/item/9789289061940.
HMRC does not hold data on alcohol duty paid on alcohol sold in pubs.
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