[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] her article under the
above heading, Lady Astor, speaking of the Liquor (Popular Control) Bill, says that " The Trade has attacked the compensation scheme of the Bill on account of the provision for an annual insurance premium of 11,000,000." This premium, she adds, " would merely take the place of the present levy of the Balfour Act."
The figures given are not, as a matter of fact, accurate.
While the compensation levies imposed by the Balfour Act now yield an annual sum of from £800,000 to £850,000, the levies proposed in the Liquor (Popular Control) Bill represent —at present assessments—a Trade contribution of £2,000,000 per annum. With increased rateable assessments the sum would be larger still. This contribution would not fall upon brewers alone, but upon brewers and licensees both.
Further, it is only fair to point out that the present Balfour levies bring certain commercial compensations to the Trade. When a redundant licence is suppressed in a licensing area its trade does not disappear, but is—in large part certainly— transferred to neighbouring houses to the financial advantage of the licensees or owners of those houses. Moreover, if —as sometimes occurs under the tied-house system—the neighbouring licensed houses are under the same ownership or control as the suppressed licences, the owners gain some- thing more in the shape of reduced working expenses and 30StS of distribution. Concentration of trade, voluntary or enforced, has indisputable commercial advantages.
Now, these offsets to the present compensation levies are not possible under the Liquor (Popular Control) Bill. The objects and options of the Bill of necessity exclude them. This is not an indictment of the Bill, but it is a fact which -qualifies the suggested analogy.—I am, Sir, &c.,
A. S.
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