{"id":4275,"date":"2026-08-24T08:51:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T08:51:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/2026\/08\/24\/politics-home-chef-tom-kerridge-says-burnham-should-create-department-for-hospitality\/"},"modified":"2026-08-24T08:51:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T08:51:12","slug":"politics-home-chef-tom-kerridge-says-burnham-should-create-department-for-hospitality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/2026\/08\/24\/politics-home-chef-tom-kerridge-says-burnham-should-create-department-for-hospitality\/","title":{"rendered":"Politics Home | Chef Tom Kerridge Says Burnham Should Create Department For Hospitality"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Award-winning chef Tom Kerridge has called on the government to create a new ministry for hospitality (Alamy)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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\n \"Alain <\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n


\n 3 min read<\/span>21 August<\/span>
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Chef and campaigner Tom Kerridge has said Prime Minister Andy Burnham should set up a new department for hospitality.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Speaking on the latest episode of PoliticsHome podcast The Rundown, the Michelin-starred restaurant owner said a “ministry of hospitality” would help recognise the industry’s importance to the wider economy at a time when it is under significant\u00a0financial pressure.<\/p>\n

\u201dThe biggest problem that we have is that a ministry of hospitality does not exist,” said Kerridge.<\/p>\n

He argued that, as things stand, various parts of government\u00a0“give an opinion on what should happen” to the industry\u00a0but, as one of the country\u2019s biggest\u00a0employers, it needs a dedicated Whitehall\u00a0department.<\/p>\n

“There should be a civil service building somewhere around here where there are people who absolutely know what they’re talking about, that can sit there and represent the industry to government,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Kerridge said having a department responsible for hospitality could help ministers\u00a0draft policy to prevent situations like the recent licensing row over so-called \u201cvertical drinking\u201d in the London borough of Westminster. The chef described the council’s contentious draft proposal to discourage people from drinking standing up as “nonsense”.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt [the department] doesn’t need to be massive. It just needs to sit there within a building because it ties so many different things together, and governments would stop having ludicrous stories like that,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Kerridge is also campaigning for VAT to be reduced from 20 per cent to 10 per cent, and additional steps on business rates to reverse the trend of hospitality businesses closing.<\/p>\n

Since entering No 10 a month ago, the Prime Minister\u00a0has announced a 20 per cent\u00a0cut to business rates from next April for pubs, social clubs and live music venues, while\u00a0Housing Secretary\u00a0Angela Rayner is changing\u00a0planning policy to protect hospitality venues from being\u00a0turned\u00a0into offices or housing.<\/p>\n

Kerridge said the steps were “positive” but\u00a0\u201cnowhere near close enough\u201d to what the hospitality industry needs.<\/p>\n

On VAT, he told the podcast:\u00a0\u201cWhether it’s 10 per cent\u00a0straight away, whether it starts as 15 and then a year later it goes to 12.5 per cent,\u00a0and then a year later it goes to 10 per cent, just something that shows we know, we care, we understand,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Kerridge added that the business rate system is \u201cnot fit for purpose\u201d in its current form\u00a0and something\u00a0Chancellor John Healey should look to improve at the late-October\u00a0Budget.<\/p>\n

According to recent research by NIQ’s Hospitality Market Monitor, between 3 and 4 pubs and restaurants are closing every day in the UK due to rising costs.<\/p>\n

The Rundown is presented by Alain Tolhurst, and is produced and edited by Ewan Cameron and Lulu Goad for\u00a0Podot<\/p>\n

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  • Click here\u00a0to listen\u00a0to the latest episode of The Rundown, or search for ‘PoliticsHome’ wherever you get your podcasts.<\/strong><\/li>\n

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    Award-winning chef Tom Kerridge has called on the government to create a new ministry for hospitality (Alamy) 3 min read21 August Chef and campaigner Tom Kerridge has said Prime Minister Andy Burnham should set up a new department for hospitality. Speaking on the latest episode of PoliticsHome podcast The Rundown, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4276,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4275\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}