The Government’s Business Adviser says we don’t need more restaurants. You are wrong and here is why

When the government’s business adviser, Alex Depledge, announced that Britain “doesn’t need any more restaurants”, I’ll admit my first reaction was disbelief. The second was to get the data. And my third, after reading it, was a simple and troubling conclusion: he has misunderstood where trade in this country lives and by doing so, makes it difficult for it to survive.

Let me start with the basics. Hospitality employs 2.6 million people in the UK, 7.1% of all employees. It generates £69.5 billion in gross value added. It contributes £54 billion in gross tax receipts a year. It is not, by any reasonable measure, a cottage industry but a bedrock of the British economy. But here’s a statistic that should stop the government’s business adviser in his tracks, one taken from a House of Commons Library research forum on hospitality, published in January 2026, that he may not have had the chance to read: 99.6% of hospitality businesses are SMEs, and 97.7% are small businesses. The adviser appointed to pave the way for small businesses might reasonably be expected to know that one of the most business-intensive sectors in the entire UK economy is the one he has just publicly dismissed.

But the argument I want to make goes beyond statistics, important as they are. It comes down to something more important, something Depledge, for all his intelligence and commercial experience, seems to have completely overlooked.

Every business deal made in this country, every investment secured, every partnership built, every customer relationship built, happens somewhere with human contact. It happens over coffee, over lunch, over dinner, at a networking event, at a conference, at a drinks reception. The Hospitality sector is not separate from the booming economy that the Government advisor wants to build. It is connective tissue. You can’t scale a clean tech company, close a venture capital round, or sign a manufacturing partnership without, at some point, sitting across the table from the person in the room that the hospitality business made available.

I want to give a concrete example of what smart support for tourist businesses looks like, because it is already happening, not the government. On our university campus, we partner with Aramark to provide catering for students, staff and events. Given the natural variation in demand during term time, Aramark did something very smart: it brought in small, independent food truck operators on a rotating basis, giving them seven or eight hours a day of guaranteed travel, exposure to large and diverse customers, and the kind of commercial experience that no business incubator program can replicate. The result is a rich, diverse cuisine for our community, and a veritable springboard for small hospitality businesses.

Pubs do the same. The Compton Arms in Islington, ranked in the UK’s Top 50 Gastropubs, has built a reputation for providing kitchen accommodation to young independent food businesses, giving them the platform, customer base and commercial experience to grow. It is not a charitable model; it’s smart. The Four Legs chefs made their home in the Compton Arms and opened Plimsoll. Walk into any bar that serves food, and you’ll find the same story, Thai kitchens working in the background, independent suppliers tending the bar, local producers on the menu. These are the natural conditions of business that it seems that the Government adviser himself did not notice.

Aramark and Compton Arms understand what the Government does not: subsidizing small hospitality businesses is not charity. It is a smart business strategy.

I would kindly invite the government’s business advisor to do a simple experiment. Consider one working day. Morning coffee was taken on the way to the office provided by an independent cafe, probably an SME. Biscuits and drinks were served at the first meeting of the day. Lunch, whether taken from a local restaurant or eaten out. An event to connect with your colleagues or clients. Family dinner that night. Calculate how many of those touch points are involved in the hospitality business. Count how many people who made those times successful are employed in the field and suggest that we don’t need more.

The government says it wants to promote tomorrow’s industries. So are we. There is no disagreement about the importance of clean technology, improved productivity, or the creative sector. But framing hospitality as standing in the way of that desire is a false and damaging choice. An economy that ignores its sixth largest employment sector, which has already seen restaurants spend 22% of their average restaurant space by 2020, and which continues to pile on costs with National Insurance increases and business rate changes, is not building for the future. It’s releasing now.

Britain’s tourism sector doesn’t need to be told it’s not wanted. It needs a government and business advisor who understands what it is and what it does well enough to support it properly.