Tory Peer Lord Hodgson Claims Teetotal Muslims Caused Collapse in Pub Numbers
Ex-boss of Midland brewer Marston’s has claimed that the increasing number of Muslims residing in the United Kingdom is to be blamed for the significant fall in pub numbers.
The claim, made by Conservative peer Lord Hodgson, was asserted in a Lords debate concerning the lack of freedom enjoyed by pub landlords due to being bound to large alcohol firms.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts said, “In areas of Nottingham, Leicester, Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham the increase in the Muslim population who don’t drink leads to many pub closures.”
He blamed the increase in the population of teetotal Muslims living in the country alongside other “socio-economic factors” as having played a greater role in the fall in British pub numbers than the fact that landlords are required to sell alcohol provided solely by the pub company.
The Tory peer said that the pub sector was “under serious strain” but the issue was not one which was “simple and straightforward”.
He said that the issue of Muslim teetotallers in Britain is one of three key factors that has led to pubs going out of business, along with easy access to cheap alcohol via supermarkets as well as the “inexorable rise of regulation”.
The former director of Wolverhampton-based Marston’s brewery, Lord Hodgson asserted that “the tide is running against the ordinary pub”.
He said, “It is exceptionally hard for a publican who has put ten years of his life into trying to build up a business to accept the inevitability of these tides of history.”
