Tax-free Shopping

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Thursday 15th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

Hopefully, I made it clear that the round table was for industry stakeholders to collate feedback on the Chancellor’s decision. There were three main concerns, which I am not going to go through. It was really to show that the Government remain in listening mode and taxes remain under review—which is true—but we do not have any plans to change this policy.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

Perhaps I can come in and defend the Minister for a moment. We should actually be thinking about shopping less. I am so sorry to say this to a bunch of such dedicated shoppers, but we should make do with less and understand that the climate crisis means we should perhaps want to possess less as well.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

I am almost tempted to agree with the noble Baroness—but, no, we want to encourage people to shop. On the matter of tourism itself, I am pleased to say that inbound tourism bookings were at about 70% of 2019 levels for the first half of the year. Although I admit our recovery is slower than that of a number of our close international competitors, there is a bit of a nuanced picture because, as I alluded to earlier, domestic tourism has seen a better recovery trajectory than inbound tourism levels. So watch this space; as I said, it is a slightly better picture than has been made out from certain quarters.