In his final Reporter column of 2021, Stalybridge and Hyde MP Jonathan Reynolds writes about the importance of the festive period to the hospitality sector.

My first job was as a waiter working weddings, parties and other functions like them. It was a job that had its downsides – during December, every hour the whole waiting staff were required to do the popular ‘Saturday Night’ dance on the main stage (to this day I can still do it). 

But it did teach me three clear things: how to do silver service, the importance of a bit of charm in earning your tips, and most of all, just how important the festive season is to pubs, clubs, and the rest of the hospitality sector.

A couple of decades on it’s still the same. It’s not uncommon for a typical hospitality business to make nearly half its annual revenue in the period between Halloween and New Year’s Eve. 

That’s why the events of the last few weeks have been so hard. For the government to hold a press conference telling people not to go out would have been difficult for businesses at any time of year. But for it to happen at this time of year, with no offer of compensating support, was not acceptable at all. And it’s not just hospitality that has been put in this position.

The country has had to spend billions of pounds on policies like furlough to get us through the pandemic. Quite simply, to give up on businesses now would mean we had wasted it.

As well as being the right thing to do, without many of the businesses affected our recovery will be slower. 

The hospitality sector alone currently accounts for £10 billion in government loans given during earlier stages of the pandemic. 

If these businesses go bust that money will also be lost. We must support them.

Covid will eventually end. I think most people understand that as each strain becomes more transmissible, its potency diminishes. This is how Spanish flu, which in 1918 killed over 50 million people, came to an end, even though the descendants of it make up the influenza viruses we’re still fighting today. Unfortunately, we are currently in a position where the Omicron strain is both very transmissible and still quite dangerous.

That’s why you need to get the vaccine. If you’ve already had the vaccine, make sure you get your booster. Don’t listen to conspiracy theories or internet myths. 

One of the reasons Spanish flu was so deadly was that it happened at a time when our understanding of science and medicine was so much more limited and, crucially, there was no NHS to organise getting a vaccine to us. That we’re no longer in that situation is a blessing – and not every country is in the same position as us.

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