A partner in a Suffolk vineyard is urging consumers to back a campaign urging Chancellor George Osborne to freeze duty on wines and spirits in next month’s Budget.

he online campaign, supported by the Wine and Spirit Trade Association, the Scotch Whsky Association and the Taxpayers’ Alliance, is calling on the Chancellor to abandon the Alchohol Duty Escalator, which pushes up the rate of duty annually above the rate of inflation.

Mr Osborne won plaudits from the brewing industry after he scrapped the escalator in respect of beer in last year’s Budget, and actually cut the rate of beer duty by 1p.

Nick Thomson, a partner at Lavenham Brook Wines & Produce, based at Brook Farm, Brent Eleigh, near Lavenham, is now encouraging consumers to write to their MPs via the campaign website − www.calltimeonduty.co.uk − asking them to press for all alcohol duties to be frozen in this year’s Budget, scheduled for March 19.

Mr Thomson said he believed many people were unaware that about £14 of the price of an average bottle of whisky in a supermarket or around £3 on a typical bottle of wine went to the the Treasury in tax, adding that, in France, tax accounted for just 20% of the price of a bottle of wine, compared with 57% in the UK.