Gloria De Piero
Main Page: Gloria De Piero (Labour - Ashfield)Department Debates - View all Gloria De Piero's debates with the Leader of the House
(14 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
John Penrose
I am afraid that the hon. Lady will have to wait for Friday to see who wants to speak for how long during the debate, but I can assure her that I have already engaged in substantial discussions with my colleagues in BIS on this. My earlier answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale), from the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, stands: this proposal could be tremendously valuable to the tourism industry as a whole, but that is not the only factor to be considered. There are issues for people who live north of border that need to be taken into account as well.
Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)
Has the Minister made any impact assessment on increasing VAT to 20% on the tourism industry in Wells and elsewhere in Britain?
John Penrose
As I am sure everybody here knows, taxation matters are for the Treasury not for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. However, I am sure that the hon. Lady realises that any attempt to try to reduce VAT in any one sector will need to come with a fully costed proposal about the impact on this country’s large deficit, which we are trying to bring down. Given the impact of deficits in other countries in Europe, it will be very difficult for anybody, in the short to medium term at least, to advance plans of that kind—without a fully costed proposal—without seeming to be extremely fiscally dangerous to this country’s economy.