Beer Taxes Bother U.K. Conservatives Ahead of Sunak’s Budget

Britain’s teetotal finance minister is under pressure to forego hundreds of millions of pounds of alcohol taxes in a bid to boost pubs, clubs and bars that have suffered because of coronavirus restrictions.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak is crafting a budget he hopes will begin to fix the virus-shaped hole in the U.K.’s finances without strangling the country’s recovery from its worst recession in a century.

Now, days before Sunak delivers his budget statement in Parliament on Oct. 27, more than a quarter of MPs in his own Conservative Party have put their names to a letter calling ...