Beer sales fell more than eight per cent in the first three months of the year compared with 2008.

The British Beer & Pub Association said 1.7 million fewer pints were drunk in the country every day from January to March than in the same period last year. Sales in pubs, bars, restaurants, supermarkets and off-licences were all down.

The BBPA, which is running the Axe the Beer Tax – Save the Pub drive with the Campaign for Real Ale, said total beer sales were down 8.2 per cent, sales in pubs, bars and restaurants were down 6.3 per cent and supermarket and off-licence beer sales were down 11 per cent.

It is the “highest quarter fall since 1997”, a spokesman said.

The BBPA’s UK Quarterly Beer Barometer showed a total of 68 million fewer pints – more than 750,000 a day – were sold in pubs, bars and restaurants between January and March compared with the same period in 2008.

The figures also showed that 326 million fewer pints were sold across the country in the first quarter compared with 10 years ago.

David Long, BBPA chief executive, said: “These figures provide more telling evidence. Falling beer sales means more publicans struggling to keep their pub doors open. Closing pubs means tens of thousands of job losses and the heart taken out of many communities.

“With the Budget last week, Government tax policy continues to make this situation worse.”

The BBPA added that the falling sales “must raise questions over the Government’s continued policy of raising Beer Tax” after it announced a two per cent rise in the Budget last week.

Tax income from duty in January and February was down £17 million on the same period in 2008, despite an 18 per cent tax increase during the period, according to the BBPA figures.