Rachel Reeves' tax raid on employers will push up the price of a pint, the boss of pub chain Young's has warned.
Simon Dodd, the chief executive, said Young's plans to increase prices between 3% and 3.5% because of the increased cost of National Insurance (NI) contributions paid by employers, which comes into effect from April.
The Telegraph reports that around 20p would be added to the cost of a pint sold at the average price in London of £6.30, according to industry data experts CGA.
Mr Dodd said: “We’ll mitigate as much as we can of the NI contribution – we’ll do that through efficiency, we’ll do that through investing in our pubs. But there will be some price passed on to the consumer.”
The comments came as Young's revealed a 7.9% rise in like-for-like sales over the 15 weeks to January 13 compared with a year earlier.
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