MP Norman Baker wants "a wider variety of beers"

"You don't want to get the same pint in Kettering as you do in Kilmarnock."

Brewer Alan Edgar, who produces beers like Downland Bitter and super-strength Saxon Berserker at the Golden Galleon pub near Seaford in Mr Baker's Sussex constituency, welcomed the move.

He said: "The current tax is smothering us. The breweries on the south coast are dead on their feet."

Mr Edgar, who has collected 4,000 signatures in support of the Parliamentary motion on the issue, says it makes no sense that duty in Britain is 30p but only 4p in France.

The progressive beer duty regime proposed by Mr Baker would also mean larger brewers paying duty on a sliding scale, depending on their size.

More beers

Current rules put small brewers at a "major competitive disadvantage" because they do not enjoy the economies of scale and marketing clout of Scottish Courage, Bass, Whitbread and Carlsberg-Tetley, but pay the same tax on each pint, the MPs argued.

At present, about 33p of every pint bought in a pub goes on beer duty.

Mr Baker estimated that the introduction of progressive duty would cost the Treasury no more than �6m.

He said: "I understand the Chancellor is not entirely averse to the idea, and we will be conducting a sustained campaign on it.

"The objective is to get a wider variety of beers in the country and avoid the concentration of production in very few hands."