David Heath today slammed the Government’s announcement of a 10% increase in duty on Cider in today’s budget.

Speaking in the House of Commons Mr Heath said: “This is a vicious attack on a traditional industry and it will particularly hurt artisan cider producers and growers in my constituency. They will be forced out of business. Alistair darling called it 'correcting an anomaly'. I call it cutting jobs and livelihoods.

“If the Government wanted to do something about the cut-price industrial alcohol on supermarket shelves they could have done so without driving traditional low-volume producers out of business.”