Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Graham Stuart and Emma Hardy

Tuesday 23rd January 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Emma Hardy]

To put that into the Bill.

Dr Laura Cohen: Into the Bill. Can I give an example on the tiles review? This goes back some of the evidence given this morning. The European Commission contacted more than 1,000 known importers and users of tiles. Only 11 companies replied to the sampling form. No user or user association came forward. After the review was published, the Tile Association, which includes UK retailers and tilers as well as overseas manufacturers, published in its magazine an article saying that when they had surveyed their members a year ago,

“A sizeable majority of respondents were in favour of the tariffs continuing and also believed that the level of tariff was about right.”

The EU—an example similar to Gareth’s—as part of its calculation had said that this would add about €1 to a square metre of tiles. It is not a large amount.

Gareth Stace: We do not have any detail of what that economic interest test is going to be. It could be there on the face of the Bill in primary legislation; it could be wishful thinking that it might be elsewhere. It cannot be that the Government do not know what that might be. We set out in July in a paper here exactly what we felt the economic interest test should be and the weighting it should apply to producers, users and importers and so on. We set it out in firm detail there, so there is no reason why it could not have been in the primary legislation.

[Graham Stuart]

Q Laura, thank you for your evidence; it has been helpful. You said definitively that we will have much lower duties than the EU.

Dr Laura Cohen: We could have much lower duties.