The all-party Beer Group of MPs is sometimes dismissed as a mere vehicle for Westminster conviviality. But no fewer than five ministers from five Whitehall departments have signed up to attend its "summit on the UK pub crisis" next Wednesday. They wouldn't have bothered a year ago.

What's going on? Quite a lot. Pubs are closing at the rate of five a day, faster than ever, and closing for a whole host of reasons, putting another 40,000 jobs - 40,000 may already have gone - at risk. Even politicians who don't spend a lot of time in them have noticed.

The Beer Group's chairman, Selby's John Grogan, is Labour and this week the sports minister, Gerry Sutcliffe, joined a pub seminar at the ippr thinktank in wine bar country. But they're all at it. The official Tory website sports a "Save the Great British Pub" logo and Lib Dem MP Greg Mulholland is spearheading a new campaign.

"It's quite significant that five ministers are willing to come along. But the reason that politicians are picking up on this issue is that pubs have become 2009's post office, one of the ingredients a community needs to be viable," says Rob Hayward, ex-MP (Tory) turned head of the British Beer and Pub Association.

The Beer Group's inquiry urged help for local or "community pubs" in current argot. But what can the politicians do or, at least as important, stop doing to help rescue pubs? Hayward stresses two goals: to reverse the 9% rise in beer duty, plus an RPI-plus-2% escalator imposed in Alistair Darling's 2008 budget and to lay off excess regulation like the extra £300m worth of costs (the Home Office's own impact assessment) in the latest Policing and Crime bill.

The Tory campaign has a similar focus (so do trades unions), which rejects swingeing tax hikes to tackle binge drinking in favour of recognition that social drinking in wholesome pubs is the best way to curb excess. Banning cynical supermarket loss-leaders, four-packs for 90p and so on, would help.

Gerry Sutcliffe told the Institute for Public Policy Research, which is writing its own pubs report, that he needs its help in winning Whitehall battles for less punitive policies. But his officials admit they can't buck market forces if people prefer to drink at home, watching TV. Pubs must adapt, as many already have, with family friendly food. Cinemas have managed to bounce back.

But pubs are squeezed from many directions: greedy, indebted pub companies (the product of a Tory market "reform") which gouge their profits; Whitehall restrictions imposed on health grounds, notably the smoking ban; fresh curbs on vending machines; and anti-booze campaigns. The Treasury needs tax receipts, the Home Office wants to stop late-night rowdies and further reduce drink-driving.

So Sutcliffe's best bet for a Whitehall ally is Hazel Blears's department of communities and local government, which is keen to foster the pub as a multi-purpose community asset. It matters even more to The Bull in Ambridge than it does to the Rover's Return.