Birmingham Commonwealth Games Bill [HL] Debate
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Lord Brookman
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Birmingham Commonwealth Games Bill [HL]
Lord Brookman Excerpts(5 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Snape
Well, it would be the George V, in that case, for the noble Lord.
Again, for the United Kingdom, this proposal would not be particularly revolutionary. As a result of escaping the dead hand of the Treasury, the Scottish Parliament is now looking at Edinburgh being the first city in the United Kingdom to charge this tax. We wish the Scots well—certainly I do—and I hope that the habit will then spread south of the border.
One of the contributors to this debate talked about the fluctuation in hotel room rates. For the hotel business to pretend that such a tax would deter business people or tourists would be misleading. I looked up the room rates at the Crowne Plaza in Birmingham this week—
Lord Snape
My noble friend asks if I pay. Well, I would not normally stay at the Crowne Plaza unless there was a pretty severe domestic dispute chez Snape—which has not yet happened, but one never knows.
The Crowne Plaza tonight will charge £122.04 for a standard room. I am not sure how the 4p comes about, but it does. On 10 July, in two days, it will charge £209 for a standard room. That is an enormous fluctuation, so I do not see how the hotel would miss a £1 or £2 charge. My noble friend Lord Brookman looks suitably shocked at these hotel prices. He might be relieved to know that, if he is around in Birmingham on Saturday, he can have the same room for £78. Presumably, business people do not visit Birmingham so much on a Saturday night, so only tourists and visitors looking for pleasure will have to pay that sort of price.
I hope that the Minister will listen to this, stand up to the bully boys of the Treasury—they exist whichever Government are in power—and insist that the funding gap to which I have referred is closed so far as the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham are concerned. Given the widespread fluctuation in the cost of hotel rooms, this would be a comparatively painless way to close that gap.