PUBS that don't sell food will get a one-off Covid support payment of £1,000, the Prime Minister has announced. 

Boris Johnson has announced to MPs that all “wet pubs” which do not serve food will receive £1,000 to “recognise how hard they have been hit” by Covid controls during what would typically be their busiest time of year.

On the hospitality sector, Mr Johnson reeled off a list of support already announced, before telling MPs in Parliament: “Today we’re going further, with a one-off payment of £1,000 in December to wet pubs – that’s pubs that do not serve food.

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“Recognising how hard they’ve been hit by this virus in what is typically their busiest month.”

Boris Johnson said there remains a “compelling necessity” for regional tiers.

Simon Emeny, the chief executive of brewers Fuller, Smith and Turner, has said a one-off payment of £1,000 will not be enough to save many wet pubs forced to remain closed under the new rules for England.

“A thousand pounds really doesn’t really go any way to solving the financial armageddon that many individual and independent operators are going to face,” he told BBC Radio 4’s The World at One.

“The challenge for wet-led pubs is if they don’t sell food they will find it impossible to operate, but you have still got bills to pay.

“They have still got to pay potentially rent, insurance costs, national insurance and the apprenticeship levy. That is far more than £1,000.”

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Boris Johnson told the Commons: “All we need to do now is to hold our nerve until these vaccines are indeed in our grasp and indeed being injected into our arms.

“So I say to the House again, let us follow the guidance, let us roll out mass testing. Let’s work to deliver mass testing to the people of our country.

“Let’s work together to control the virus, and it is in that spirit that I commend these regulations.”