Brewery to challenge beer-duty rise

A family brewery is to mount a legal challenge against the Government's 1p-a-pint duty rise on beer, it emerged yesterday.

Lawyers for Shepherd Neame are seeking a judicial review of Chancellor Gordon Brown's budget decision which they say has left British brewers even worse off in the battle against cheap continental beer imports.

The drinks industry has long campaigned against the high rate of duty - six-times that in France - imposed on home-made products and blamed for the closure of hundreds of pubs. The High Court will hear that under the Treaty of Rome, governments are obliged to harmonise duty rates with Europe and promote the single market.