Breaking through to government: solutions, stats and singing from the same song-sheet
Badgering your MPs with solutions as well as requests, presenting quantifiable data that is “unignorable” and making sure that we’re all singing off the same song-sheet, will be key to lobbying for the maximise chances of getting the industry’s requests, the WSTA’s CEO Miles Beale told the opening session of the London Wine Fair.
The opening session on Monday underlined the current challenges facing the industry, as well as the strengths that the industry needs to tap into and communicate, particularly to the government.
Beale said that one of the wine and spirits industry’s biggest strengths in terms of lobbying government was its ability to work together. “Divided, you tend to get picked off,” he said.
He argued that the industry needs to be “on the same page …make sure there are many of you there as possible, and … make sure you are giving government something they can’t ignore,” he advised. “[We need to be] too big to ignore – if we lobby as hospitality in the supply chain, or food and drink, we’re pretty unignorable.”
He argued that there’s no point just “banging the table and asking for something where there’s no return for the government”, we need to have “good answers to some of the things they need to care about” and making a very strong, well-evidenced case backed up scripts “that lots of us can share”.
“Government needs to be better at joining up and asking industry for some answers,” he said.
Shoulder to the wheel
With growth being “very high priority” in Whitehall, however, there was an opportunity to highlight the role hospitality could play in solving government headaches, such as the underemployment of young people.
“We should be saying to government is, you have a big problem with unemployed young people,” he pointed out. “It doesn’t take a genius to work out if the government’s happy to work with us as hospitality and supply chain, we could be providing more jobs to those young people who are currently unemployed. And the other big advantage for us is if we manage to turn that around and… encourage [people] to stay for a career. Why come just for your first job?”
He also argued that one of the things that works best with governments is statistics data – and unusual case studies that a local MP can get behind.
“We need those businesses giving themselves as examples and putting their shoulder to the wheel, so, when we mount a campaign, join us, write to your local MP,” he said. “They all care about losing their seats, because they all think they’re going to – there seems to be a massive change every general election, so take advantage of it!”
Speaking to db after the session, Beale said government “needs to be better at joining up and asking industry for some answers. We always try and provide solutions. They don’t need to do that much, they need to do what we ask if we have an solution,” he said. One “no-brainer” that would be very easily implemented by government is for the UK to rejoin the World Wine Trade Group permanently, he said.. Currently, we are only an observer, with Defra attending regularly “but government needs to make a decision to join on a permanent basis, which I’m confident they will, and they certainly should.”
Challenges and Opportunities in the Industry
And while the tax regime and business costs remain high – with changes often affecting smaller businesses more than larger ones due to their smaller cash reserves and number of staff people, there are things to be celebrated.
For example he pointed out the “very successful industry-led 10 and a half years” in terms of health, with has seen volume consumption falling, and premiumisation, a population that is increasingly interested in provenance and nutrition as well as things like no and no alcohol, not only in terms of products that taste better, “and from a viewpoint of moderating their own behaviour, they’re more informed”, he said.
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Beale also highlighted the importance of the industry’s size and position as a UK Hub for wine imports and exports, even though times had been tough across the board. “The irony is, even though things are going less well for us than they were, the US might fall from top spot (by value) given the way Trump is approaching things,” he added.
“The UK’s wine and spirit industry is always much bigger than people give us credit for,” he said, pointing out that it worth £76 billion, of which just over half is spirits, and £33 billion is wine. It also employs around 412,000 people, with diversity as important, if not more so, than its size – logistics companies, bottlers, packagers, marketeers, and retailers, from the biggest multiple retailers to some of the best independent retail specialists were key.
Innovation
He also highlighted areas of innovation and growth – for example interest in different formats to meet new occasions and. He cited canned wine as an innovation that had “got it right” in opening up the market, providing great quality and convenience for consumers (and on and off-trade operators) “It doesn’t really matter how you’re providing it if it’s convenient and it tastes good.”
Bag-in-box and 20L kegs in the on-trade were also areas seeing renewed interest, he said. “It’s how people want to drink – if consumers are drinking less and wanting more of an occasion, but maybe wanting to take the occasion with them, then that might be a challenge for hospitality, but it’s also a very interesting thing for us to have to respond to. But if you’re a good business, you respond to what your customers and what consumers want.”
Meanwhile low ABV drinks, driven by both consumer demand and new tax regimes had expanded into a new category in its own right, albeit of a small base.
“More people are interested in no and low products because they want to change the way they drink, whether that’s zebra striping or days off [alcohol] or week,” he explained. “You don’t invent a no alcohol product for someone who’s never drunk so it’s not a soft drink thing, it is definitely replacing the products that we sell. So we’re disproportionately interested in finding the right stuff – but it is also a tiny bit of the market.”
He pointed out that low alcohol had grown 17% in the off-trade since 2022 and 94% in the on trade, “but it’s still not more than 3% of the category”.
“It is a great, fantastic trend, but [one that is] not really shifting the dial yet.”
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