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Hello, I'm Alicia McCarthy.

Thanks for downloading the yesterday in Parliament podcast.

On Tuesday, the 27th of January,

the government set out plans to discount business rates

for pubs and music venues in England

after warnings from the industry

and some labour-back

benches about the impact of changes made in last year's budget.

Around 1,000 pubs have banned Labour MPs from stopping by for a drink in protest

at the Chancellor's changes in her November budget.

At Treasury questions in the Commons, Rachel Reeves insisted the government was pouring

cash into the wider industry. We've put £4.3 billion of taxpayers' money into supporting

our retail and hospitality sector, including pubs, but we recognise the distinct problems that pubs

face, which is why, unlike the previous Conservative government,

we are setting out more support.

And the details of that support came a couple of hours later from the Treasury Minister Dan Tomlinson.

He insisted the government had already taken action to soften the impact of the changes on pubs

and had decided to phase out rather than abruptly

stop support they'd started receiving during the pandemic. But there'd been anger from the industry

and discontent on the labour benches about a switch to the way business rates were calculated,

so he was announcing a concession. Pubs and music venues in England would now get 15% of their business rates bill from April

...