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WSTA's Call Time on Duty campaign wins major PR award

Published:  27 February, 2015

The Wine & Spirit Trade Association's Call Time On Duty campaign, which helped see the end of the duty escalator on wine and spirits in last year's Budget, has won a prestigious national public relations award.

The Wine & Spirit Trade Association's Call Time On Duty campaign, which helped see the end of the duty escalator on wine and spirits in last year's Budget, has won a prestigious national public relations award.

The campaign was named Best PR Campaign award at today's Association Excellence Awards, held for professional and trade associations, hosted by former Conservative MP Michael Portillo. 

The success is a big boost to the WSTA as it looks to galvanise the wine and spirits trade for one final push to get the Chancellor on side again year's by cutting duty rates by 2% in next month's Budget.

The WSTA's current campaign, Drop the Duty, is urging everyone in the sector to go to its website, key in their postcode, find the name of their MP and send them a targeted templated letter setting out the reasons why a duty cut makes financial sense.

Last year's 'Call Time on Duty' initiative was centred around a similar campaign to get the support of the trade to nationally target MPs to lobby the Chancellor to bring an end to the duty escalator.

The campaign, like this year's Drop the Duty initiative, was supported by the Scotch Whisky Association and the TaxPayers' Alliance.

Miles Beale, chief executive of the WSTA, said of the award: "The Call Time on Duty campaign was a significant turning point for the wine and spirit industry. Through unprecedented industry cooperation we successfully built enough momentum to persuade the Chancellor to remove the punitive duty escalator after six years.

"But we aim for this to be just the start. More needs to be done if we are going to really see the industry meet its potential - which is why we are calling for a 2% cut in the upcoming Budget. This cut would free up the industry to grow and compete internationally. With consumers currently paying nearly 60% in tax on each bottle of wine and nearly 80% on a bottle of spirits, the system needs to be rebalanced. There have been only two spirits duty cuts in the last century and wine last saw a duty cut the year before Michael Portillo was first elected as an MP!"

"Building on last year's success, we are in a good position to make this case to the Chancellor but time is of the essence and we need full support from the industry if we are going to achieve our goal."

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