Beer tax increases cost 20,000 jobs -really?

The report here Beer tax increases cost 20,000 jobs so far | Politics | guardian.co.uk tells us that the brewing trade would have us believe: "A record 2,000 British pubs have closed with the loss of 20,000 jobs since the chancellor, Alistair Darling, increased beer tax in the 2008 budget," Now come on: where's the in-depth journalism on this? We need to know answers to questions like this:
Since pubs have been closing rapidly for a number of years, what is the adjusted effect of the increase in tax? And if the appeal is to jobs in the UK, what is the effect in terms of jobs created or lost elsewhere? For example in hospitals and other health care areas mopping up the effects of alcohol consumption: ditto, police time, courts' time, probation services etc. Not to mention the effect that money that might otherwise have been spent on alcoholic drinks being spent on, say, DVDs or gyms or pizza ... so let's have a bit more contextual thinking about this and some more incisive journalism.

And then there's the paradox of some things improving GDP but maybe not being good for the nations health in a holistic sense. Cleaning up pollution adds to the monetary economy, for example, but it would be far better not to produce it in the first place and to encourage different kinds of employment and manufacture.