YOU don't know what you've got ‘til it's gone, the famous old song goes – and that is definitely true of the Great British Pub, that threatened institution.

All around us, once-thriving boozers are calling time for good, with 6,000 having bitten the dust over the last four years, according to campaigners.

More than 100 were lost across this region in just four years, a Westminster “pubs summit”

was told a while back –- with rural North Yorkshire the hardest hit –- and many more will have disappeared since, I’m sure.

As a dad-of-two, my nights out are limited these days, but – when I do find myself licking my lips at the bar – I’m always astonished that the place is like the Mary Celeste.

Many reasons are put forward – cheap supermarket booze, greedy ‘pubco’ landlords, even the smoking ban – but, year-after-year, one explanation never goes away.

This complaint is the way governments, of whatever colour, pile more and more tax onto the cost of a humble pint of beer –- regardless of the consequences.

Every Budget, a “beer tax escalator”

hikes the tax on ale by two per cent above the rate of inflation, a policy started by Gordon Brown’s government and happily embraced by this one.

According to the British Beer and Pub Association, beer duty has soared by 42 per cent since March 2008 – and, surely not coincidentally – there has been a 15 per cent plunge in pints sold.

Now, today, MPs will have three hours to explain why the Treasury should think again, after an ‘e-petition’ collected 104,689 signatures and triggered a Commons debate.

The petition reads: “Going to the pub is a core British tradition and so is enjoying great beer. If we don’t show our support for the great British pub, we risk losing more pubs and more jobs.”

Of course, times are tough and the Government is striving to balance the books.

Sure enough, its response to the petition reads: “The revenues from alcohol duty make an important contribution to tackling Britain’s debt crisis.”

But ministers need to recognise that something bigger is at stake here. Pubs can be the heart and soul of communities – so taxing them out of existence weakens those vital links.

It also makes no sense to kill pubs – which, as the response admits, “promote responsible drinking” –- while allowing supermarkets to flog ever-cheaper, super-strength booze, often to be drunk alone somewhere.

MY office is in a building that is 150 years old and is falling apart. It’s riddled with asbestos and electrics that date back to the Great Depression – the last one, before the war.

I’m not complaining, obviously –- it’s a great privilege to stalk the Palace of Westminster – but what can be done about a terrifying repair bill, put at £1.8bn?

As a peers’ report said yesterday: “If the Palace were not a listed building, of the highest heritage value, its owners would probably be advised to demolish and rebuild.”

IT’S always a pleasure to chat with Lord Heseltine – as I did this week, over his radical plans for devolution.

It made it especially nice when he kept telling me I was too young to remember momentous events back in the 1980s.

Ah, if only that were true, Michael!