Tax-free Shopping for International Visitors

Nickie Aiken Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2023 Westminster Hall

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered tax-free shopping for international visitors.

I thank you, Dr Huq, and Mr Speaker very much for granting me this opportunity to bring before the House the important subject of tax-free shopping—both VAT reclaim and duty-free shopping—for international visitors to this country. I also thank my hon. Friend the Minister, to whom I am grateful for turning up on this hot afternoon when I am sure she would much rather be doing something else. I am delighted to have the support of colleagues from throughout the country on this campaign. Of course, this issue affects not only London—it affects London greatly—but cities and tourist hubs across the UK, shopping destinations, cultural venues and the major regional airports.

This is an important debate on an issue I have campaigned on for the past few years following the Government’s decision to end tax-free shopping for international visitors when we left the EU. We are now the only major European country that does not have tax-free shopping, and the British economy is missing out as a result. In fact, the United Nations World Tourism Organisation barometer shows that Britain’s post-pandemic recovery in visitor numbers is the worst of all major European countries.

It is important at the start of the debate to respond to the idea that such a scheme would not benefit the British people. A study by Oxford Economics showed that restoring tax-free shopping would directly create a staggering 78,000 new jobs up and down the UK, possibly add as much as £4.1 billion to UK GDP, and result in—we believe—a net positive £350 million each year for His Majesty’s Treasury. In my speech, I will go into more detail and examine what the data suggests on the opportunities for economic growth from reintroducing tax-free shopping and VAT reclaim for foreign visitors.

Before we review the figures, I make it clear that my sole ask today of my hon. Friend, which I have to say would be almost cost-free, is for the Treasury to commission an independent assessment through the Office for Budget Responsibility or a respected audit firm—so that the Treasury believes it when it gets the results—of the full economic effect of tax-free shopping on the UK figures and all the figures that are available.

I believe the Government’s current position is based on inaccurate and incomplete Treasury figures that say that the cost of tax-free shopping would be £2 billion a year in refunded VAT. To highlight briefly how inaccurate those figures are, that calculation was reached by overestimating VAT refunds to UK shoppers by £600 million and excluding any tax revenue from increased spending by extra tourists. I therefore urge the Government to reconsider their objections to tax-free shopping which, as I say, I believe are based on inaccurate figures. We need an independent review to consider the topic so that we do not miss out on what could be a hugely positive and almost instantaneous win for the UK economy.

On 31 December 2020, the UK ended its tax-free shopping schemes for non-EU visitors and did not extend the schemes to EU visitors after the UK left the EU. The Government’s reasoning for that decision was the estimated cost of extending tax-free shopping to EU residents. Incidentally, all EU countries refund VAT on goods purchased by non-EU visitors—those visitors get the VAT refunded on purchases on the high streets and at duty-free shops in airports. Critically, Britain is therefore now 20% more expensive for shopping than any EU destination.

As we know, the entire economy was badly hit by the covid-19 pandemic and the wide shutdown of society during lockdown. Some of our hardest-hit industries were the tourism, culture and leisure, and hospitality sectors, which, owing to the very nature of their businesses, were unable to adapt easily to the hard lockdown rules, the impact of international restrictions, and reduced travel and tourism.

Now, thankfully, the pandemic is over. We have seen tourists return to the UK to enjoy the cultural sites in London, travel to our other great cities across our great country, and visit our picturesque towns and villages—including tens of thousands of visitors, I am glad to say, to my constituency of the Cotswolds. Sadly, however, our tourist industry recovery has not been as strong as that of some of our European neighbours.

All the real trading data from 2022, as international travel resumed, consistently undermines the Treasury’s forecast, which is that tax-free shopping would have little impact on visitor numbers and spending. The actual data on visitor numbers from 2022 and early 2023 show that ending tax-free shopping has had a significant negative impact on the behaviour of international travellers. Many choose to visit the UK, but unfortunately the really high spenders travel to Europe, because it is 20% cheaper to do their luxury goods shopping there.

For example, in 2022, spending by US visitors to the UK was back to pre-2019 pandemic levels, but in France, Spain and Italy it was double. In quarter 1 of 2023, US visitor spending was still just at 2019 levels in the UK, but in France and Spain it was around three times as much as 2019. Unfortunately, the differential is widening. Similarly, spending by Gulf Co-operation Council visitors to the UK in 2022 was around 65% of 2019 levels, whereas in Italy and Spain it was one and a half times the 2019 levels and in France it was double.

Brexit was an opportunity to create change in our economy that truly benefits the UK—creating new opportunities for growth for our innovative and internationally renowned retail, tourism and hospitality sectors. Instead, the EU is enjoying a Brexit bonus at Britain’s expense. Unfortunately, we have a double whammy: British shoppers joining other international visitors to shop tax-free in the EU, not in the UK, but not the same level of increased spending here as in other European countries. British shoppers now spend £1 billion on shopping tax-free in the EU, not here. If tax-free shopping was reinstated, Britain would be the only major European economy where 447 million EU residents could shop tax-free, which would create a huge new tourist market. Britain is missing out on a £1 billion Brexit bonus—a real opportunity for Brexit growth.

HMT did not forecast that that many visitors would be diverted completely from visiting the UK in favour of EU destinations. At the Government’s request, many businesses submitted actual evidence to HMT, in confidence, on the impact of ending tax-free shopping. The submissions show without a doubt that British businesses have suffered hundreds of millions of pounds in lost sales since 2022, and they see it getting worse, as more and more international travellers realise that they cannot shop tax-free in Britain.

In June 2023, the business improvement district for London’s west end, the New West End Company, which my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) knows well, surveyed its member businesses. More than half—54%—said that they were reviewing their long-term capital investment programmes to take account of the fall in the relative performance of their west end stores compared with their stores in continental Europe. More than one fifth—22%—are considering closing their London stores and relocating to mainland Europe. That is an example of how the UK is losing out.

HM Treasury forecasts that allowing 415 million EU residents to shop tax-free in Britain would generate only 50,000 additional trips annually—0.2% of the 24 million EU visitors in 2019. By the same logic, 66 million British residents now being able to shop tax-free in the EU would generate only an additional 9,000 trips. That is simply not credible. The reality is that in 2022 around 48,000 British people claimed VAT refunds in the EU, worth more than half a billion pounds. In 2023, that figure has more than doubled. We estimate that more than 1 million British residents will spend more than £1 billion on tax-free shopping in the EU, but not in the UK. That is one more proof that the Treasury has out-of-date forecasts.

On 3 August, along with my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green), I co-signed a letter to the Chancellor highlighting the most recent forecasting report from leading economics consultancy Cebr, the Centre for Economics and Business Research. Its figures were built on an earlier study by Oxford Economics. The two reports were staggering. Cebr forecast additional visitor numbers of between 1.6 million and 1.7 million into this country if the measures were reinstalled, and increased spending of £1.7 billion to £2.8 billion. They each forecast that the GDP of the UK could increase by between £4.1 billion and £9.1 billion annually.

I note that the Treasury forecast is just an extra 50,000 visitors. The slight difference between the data of the Oxford Economics and Cebr forecasts is due to timing, with the former’s report released in October 2022 and the latter’s published in July 2023. However, we now have real consumer behaviour and spending data. By contrast with the up-to-date findings from Cebr, the Treasury’s own figures, on which the Government are making their decisions, come from 2020 estimates. I say to the Minister that the data is quite out of date and so low that it considerably reduces the estimate for visitor numbers and spend.

The Minister recently wrote to me saying that the Government were concerned that the findings of the Oxford Economics study did not match those of the OBR, particularly on the expected number of visitors as a result of introducing tax-free shopping. As I just said, the Oxford Economics forecast is an extra 1.6 million visitors, whereas the OBR forecast is 50,000. However, the Oxford Economics forecasts are being proved right by the real data from businesses that is now coming in, and the OBR figure is being proved significantly wrong.

All the data coming in clearly shows that the reason why the Treasury does not recognise the figure from Oxford Economics is not because the Oxford Economics forecast is wrong but because the OBR forecast is out of date. The Government are understandably acting on figures from the Treasury that they deem to be reliable. To assess the figures and bring some finality to the debate, I wrote to the OBR in May asking whether it could examine the costings and benefits related to tax-free shopping, both for VAT reclaim and duty-free shopping. Unfortunately, I am yet to receive a full response.

Chinese travellers are the biggest spenders of all, and in the last year Chinese visitors spent $258 billion—almost twice as much as visitors from the USA, who are the second biggest spenders at $135 billion—and they have the biggest potential for growth in the UK. Shopping is their No. 1 priority. Ending tax-free shopping in Britain is closing the door on the most important market for the international visitor economy. From 2009 to 2019, I was heavily involved in growing the number of Chinese visitors to the UK from 130,000 to 800,000, which is almost as many as France has. It was largely due to that increase in high-spending Chinese visitors that overall international spending pre-pandemic increased by 60%, from £17.6 billion to £26.4 billion.

The figures are significant. In 2019, some 800,000 Chinese visitors made up 5% of the 16 million non-EU visitors to the UK, but accounted for a staggering 32% of all tax-free shopping in the UK, spending around £1 billion. Of course, the Chinese were not travelling in 2022 because they were still locked down, but a survey of Chinese who had previously shopped in Europe showed that Britain had dropped from the second favourite European destination in 2019, just below France, to the least popular of all major European countries. In 2022, 75% visited France but only a tiny 42% visited the UK.

The Minister has quite rightly been asking for real evidence on the ground; I will give it to her now. Evidence from Heathrow airport shows that Chinese visitor numbers in July 2023 were at 88% of their 2019 levels, but spending in the shops at Heathrow was at just 33%. The Chinese are coming to the UK, but they are not spending money without the option of VAT reclaim.

There is a common perception that tax-free shopping affects only Oxford Street, Bond Street and the west end; however, this issue affects the whole United Kingdom. That is why the campaign has such wide and growing support, not just from colleagues throughout the country in this House but from major airports, hoteliers, cultural institutions and companies. The amounts spent outside London are significant for local economies—for example, Edinburgh, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow and Leeds together accounted for £225 million of tax-free sales in 2019.

The direct impact of all this is on retail sales, but there is also a wider impact on hospitality, culture, leisure and manufacturing. Here is another real example: in its annual report, the Dorchester hotel group reported that its Paris hotel was overperforming and its London one was underperforming as a direct result of the end of tax-free shopping. The Royal Opera House, Shakespeare’s Globe, west end theatres and Rank casinos have all publicly criticised the ending of tax-free shopping.

International travellers buy more goods from brands in the countries they are visiting, so British brands such as Mulberry, Burberry and Church’s shoes suffer the most. Mulberry has already had to close its flagship Bond Street store, which it blames solely on the end of tax-free shopping. Just imagine that: Mulberry, after all those years on Bond Street, is having to close. That has an impact on its London stores but also on the manufacturing plants and jobs throughout the UK that depend on the shops that are closing. Burberry manufactures in the north-east, Mulberry manufactures in the south-west and Church’s shoes manufactures in the east midlands, so support from across the country has been submitted in this campaign, demonstrating the real impact of the removal of tax-free shopping.

Just a few case studies include National Museums Scotland’s shop, Essential Edinburgh, Edinburgh Tourism Action Group, Birmingham Chamber of Commerce, Marketing Manchester, North West Business Leadership Team and businesses including Johnstons of Elgin, Church & Co, Boodles and Samsonite. The estimated loss of revenue and jobs will affect regional airports as well as manufacturing in factories in Blyth, Yorkshire and Somerset and high-value shopping areas such as Edinburgh, Dundee, London, Manchester and Leeds.

My hon. Friend the Financial Secretary kindly responded to my letter to the Chancellor yesterday to say that the Government are accepting evidence—I welcome that openness and thank her for that—to inform their policymaking on this issue and ensure that the Treasury has the latest data on the impact of the removal of the VAT retail export scheme. I hope that she and other colleagues will find that this debate adds to the compelling case for tax-free shopping for international visitors.

With all the real-world data emerging by the day showing that HMT’s forecasts are out of data, we urgently need the independent assessment that I referred to earlier on the full impact of tax-free shopping on the UK economy and its tax revenues. I say this to my hon. Friend the Minister: if an independent assessment shows that the full tax impact is either neutral or net positive, the Government must move quickly to restore tax-free shopping before more damage is done to the UK economy. If such a study proves that the Treasury’s figures of £2 billion costs are correct, I will happily accept that and go away and not be a nuisance to her.

[Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

International visitors pay VAT when they stay in hotels, eat in restaurants, drink in bars and go to the theatre, so the independent review must look not just at retail but at the possible VAT revenue that the Treasury would receive if there were more international visitors coming here to shop.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

My hon. Friend makes a really good point. This is what the Treasury figures do not cover at the moment. It is not just the VAT reclaimed; it is the VAT paid on all the other items, such as meals in hotels. And it is not just VAT: it is corporation tax, air passenger duty and a range of other duties that will be brought into the Treasury. That is where the figure of £350 million—our estimate—comes from, so my hon. Friend makes a really important point.

You will be glad to know I am coming to a conclusion, Dr Huq. The Treasury’s figures are based on the wrong methodology that does not consider in full the major upside for the country. I make an urgent plea today to the Financial Secretary. It is time that the OBR or another audit firm did a proper investigation into all the figures, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster said, instead of sticking to the figures that were produced for it in 2020. If it proves that the Treasury figures are correct, so be it. But if, as so many experts and businesses believe, there is considerable economic gain from introducing tax-free shopping, it would be an utter tragedy not to do so. Let us consider the real opportunity for growth and invigorate our economy by introducing tax-free shopping for tourists who come to this country.

[Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) for securing this important debate. As the Member of Parliament for Cities of London and Westminster, the issue is incredibly important to the economy of my constituency.

International visitors are the lifeblood of so many businesses in areas such as Knightsbridge and the west end, including iconic streets such as Oxford Street, Bond Street and Regent Street. Retail in the two cities accounts for over 4,000 businesses employing approximately 55,000 employees. World famous department stores such as Selfridges and Liberty, as well as the luxury brands along Regent Street and Bond Street, rely on international visitors from China, India, the USA and the middle east. I highlight visitors from those countries and regions because visitors from those areas spend on average 60% more than EU visitors. But of course we are also currently disincentivising visitors from both outside and inside the EU.

Visitors from India and the middle east consistently list shopping as the No. 1 reason for visiting London, according to VisitBritain. Visitors from those areas also state that the tax rate is a consideration when they decide where they wish to travel and how much they are willing to spend when they travel.

I know the Government are committed to supporting retail businesses of all sizes. I thank the Minister for her Department’s strong support over the challenging couple of years that we have endured during the pandemic, but now is the time to kickstart the regrowth of our high streets. She will recognise that reintroducing tax-free shopping would be a boost to the businesses that suffered most in the pandemic as their physical stores were forced to shut and tourists were not allowed to travel.

Many of the luxury brands that visitors love to buy in the shops in my constituency have factories based in the United Kingdom, creating skilled jobs and supporting great British manufacturing. For example, Burberry’s iconic trench coats are handmade in Castleford in Yorkshire.

As a Conservative, I believe strongly in the growth potential of cutting taxes. Tax-free shopping for international visitors is a perfect example of when cutting a tax rate will increase the total amount of taxable spending. It goes back to the point that I made earlier: when we consider how much tax revenue that international visitors bring in, the issue is not just about shopping. We should take tax away from shopping and allow people to claim back tax on it. They are spending millions, probably billions, of pounds. They probably spend more money on the theatre, restaurants, drinking in our bars and going to other tourist attractions and paying VAT on that. That is why I would ask for an independent review of the whole situation in which we look at VAT and other taxes, including national insurance for the increased number of employees we will have if we want to grow our economy. We want to grow our hospitality sector and our leisure and tourism sector. Those are real jobs. Companies pay corporation tax and employee tax.

I truly believe that re-introducing tax-free shopping will provide a much-needed boost to a wide range of businesses across a number of sectors. This is borne out of new research from Oxford Economics and the Association of International Retail that clearly demonstrates that the tax receipts we will take from these connector sectors will far exceed the revenue lost by offering VAT exemptions on visitor shopping. By offering a VAT exemption, we will reverse the trend we have seen since the abolition of tax-free shopping, where international visitors have been choosing to go to Paris instead. UK international arrivals are down 22% since 2019. The pandemic has obviously had an impact, but France’s visitor figures are down by only 12.7%.

I suspect that one of the reasons for the discrepancy is that EU countries still offer tax-free shopping for international visitors. I believe that the French actually improved their tax-free shopping offer for international visitors once we got rid of ours. That shows how important it is to attract visitors into the country—and the French realise this. We know that these visitors are spending less in the UK compared with other European countries. In 2022, spending by visitors in the UK from the US was at 101% of 2019 levels, but in France it was a staggering 226% of 2019 levels. It is obvious that we must do all we can to ensure that London remains the No. 1 destination for international visitors.

Let us not forget that when international visitors come here, they come to London—it is obviously a huge draw to go to the capital city of a country—but they also go elsewhere. They go to Edinburgh, to Inverness to see if they can find Nessie, to York, to Oxford and, of course, to the beautiful Cotswolds. Reintroducing tax-free shopping will lead to more international visitors enjoying the rest of the United Kingdom and the home nations. Since taking away tax-free shopping for international visitors, the number of days that people are coming here for has reduced. People come to London from all over the world, but now, rather than staying for four or five days, they stay for two or three days and then take the Eurostar to Paris to do their shopping. That is what we need to stop. We need to ensure that people come here to enjoy London and the rest of the United Kingdom and to shop here too.

We must reintroduce tax-free shopping. London is one of a small handful of global cities, and I fear that losing tax-free shopping is damaging our reputation as a global city. As my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds mentioned, the Oxford Economics study predicted that by offering tax-free shopping, we could attract more than 1.6 million extra visitors to the UK every year, stimulating an extra £2.8 billion in tourist spending overall. Think about the tax revenue that we could get from VAT on all the other money they spend here. We must not underestimate the huge impact these extra visitors have on the spending in our wider economy, not just in my constituency but across the United Kingdom. I do believe that it was one of the big attractions when people came here.

The key point is that people do not just spend their money on clothes, or jewellery or watches. They spend money in the restaurants they dine in and in the black cabs they take—I checked earlier, and people have to pay VAT on black cabs, so the cabbies should be supporting our campaign here. People also go to theatres and clubs. They spend money across so many sectors.

I know from speaking to restauranteurs, theatre owners and other stakeholders, such as UKHospitality, that they are all united in wanting tax-free shopping for international visitors to be reinstated. Many of these businesses tell me that they are struggling to get back to their pre-pandemic levels of business and believe that a large part of that is a reduction in foreign visitors, who are preferring to go to Paris or Milan.

The Cities of London and Westminster can be seen as a jigsaw in many ways. The hotels, restaurants, shops, bars, cafés and theatres fit together neatly as an impressive tourist offer. Tax-free shopping has become the missing piece of that jigsaw. If it is returned, it will benefit not just my constituency and retailers, but thousands upon thousands of businesses across this country. That is why I call on the Government to review the whole situation and consider reintroducing tax-free shopping for all international visitors from the EU and outside it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Atkins]

In fairness, it may be that people do not know that it is available. I do not know whether shops or brands advertise it to their customers. If a consumer is buying a larger item, they may think it much more convenient to have it sent home. The scheme is available should shoppers wish to make the savings described in the debate.

I acknowledge this has not been the case today, but some people call the current situation a “tourist tax”. Again, that is not correct, because the change in the law that happened a couple of years ago means that we simply expect overseas tourists to pay the same amount of tax as British people do when making a purchase, especially when so many countries—including some of the alternative shopping destinations that can be mentioned—do impose a genuine tourist tax on their visitors. So please let us not refer to it in that way, because that would not be correct.

My hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds understandably referred to a 20% saving from such VAT refunds, but that assumes that shoppers receive all the VAT back. In reality, we know that the companies processing refunds, who are sometimes the retailers themselves, charge significant administrative fees for the service. Indeed, one third of VAT RES users surveyed by HMRC were charged more than 50% of their refund in fees, and the average was 36%, so the savings to the consumer may be far less than the 20% rate of VAT.

To try to set in context the environment in which I am considering this request—alongside many others—since we voted to leave the European Union in 2016, the Treasury has received some £50 billion-worth of helpful suggestions and requests for products or items that should be zero-rated or have VAT relief applied to them. Cases are made in different debates on different subject matters where we are asked to make VAT relief decisions. Of course, VAT remains our third most productive tax in the UK, and it helps to support many of the public services that we all care so deeply about. Those are serious considerations that we must take into account for any request for VAT relief that we receive.

I completely understand the intentions behind my hon. Friend’s work—indeed, I commend him on it—and I share his wish to ensure that the UK remains an attractive place to visit and that support for our retail sector and high streets is strengthened. Both intentions and aspirations are shared across the Government. Therefore, if I may, I will take a couple of moments to help the House understand what we have done to achieve exactly that.

Through VisitBritain and the GREAT campaign, we have invested significantly in marketing the UK both domestically and internationally to stimulate demand and support recovery. According to updated forecasts from VisitBritain, there are due to be 37.5 million visits to the UK this year, which is some 92% of the level seen in 2019 before the pandemic, and inbound visitor spending is forecast to be £30.9 billion, which is up 9%. Those updates follow the stronger recovery we are seeing, with spending by American visitors up 42% to a record £6 billion last year alone. Sadly, international visitor numbers are still below 2019 levels for all G7 members and large European countries in 2022 and 2023, but of course that comes against the backdrop of the UK economy doing much better than was forecast over the last year or so, as we saw really encouraging growth figures more generally for the economy last week. Rather than ours being the weakest post-pandemic recovery in terms of visitor numbers, the post-pandemic recovery in the UK has been stronger than in countries, such as Germany and Japan, that continued to offer VAT RES. Post-pandemic recovery in the UK has also been stronger than in the United States and Canada in both 2022 and 2023.

We want to make sure that the tourist experience in the UK is as great as it can possibly be. One of the ways in which we have tried to reduce the bureaucracy and the barriers for tourists coming into the UK is by creating an exemption from visa requirements through our new electronic travel authorisation scheme to boost international tourism numbers, with visitors from the Gulf Co-operation Council states and Jordan being the first to benefit. We have also worked with industry to set up the tourism industry working group on international competitiveness and demand, which has been established to recommend practical policy options to support tourism recovery.

[Nickie Aiken]

I was interested to hear about that new collection of people working together to improve the tourist offer. If that group recommended that VAT RES be reintroduced to help the growth of tourism, would the Treasury be minded to accept that recommendation?

[Victoria Atkins]

My hon. Friend will know that that group will not necessarily have access—in fact, I would be surprised if it did—to the macroeconomic data that the Treasury, the OBR and others, including the retail industry itself, have. We understand that every decision we make will be scrutinised in due course by the independent Office for Budget Responsibility, so there are processes that we have to go through. As I have said, however, and as I will repeat in this speech, we are very keen to hear evidence and data from the retail sector. We very much keep this policy under review.

In respect of high streets, it is argued that the reintroduction of the VAT RES scheme would be a useful move to support our world-leading retailers. This Government are proud to have provided huge support to the retail sector, not least through the extreme challenges that that sector faced during the pandemic. Hon. Members will recall the measures that we took to ensure that the sector paid no business rates—support that was worth £16 billion to businesses in the retail, hospitality and leisure sectors throughout the pandemic—as well as the very practical support measures such as the furlough scheme, bounce back loans and even small business grants for the smaller businesses in our communities, all of which helped to secure and safeguard millions of jobs across the UK economy and keep businesses surviving through that very difficult time. We would argue that that support helped to keep our high streets, our retail centres and our communities thriving.

We clearly recognise the importance of retailers and will continue to act effectively to support them. At autumn statement 2022, the Government announced business rate changes and tax cuts worth more than £13.5 billion over the next five years, which will support the retail, tourism, leisure and hospitality sectors, as well as other parts of the economy. These announcements included a freeze to the business rates multiplier for 2023-24, which is a tax cut worth £9.3 billion over the next five years, meaning that all bills are 6% lower than without the freeze.

We also introduced an Exchequer-funded transitional relief scheme, which many sectors had asked for and which is worth £1.6 billion, to protect an estimated 700,000 rate-payers facing bill increases due to the increases in rateable value. Indeed, I have had the pleasure of visiting that great British company John Lewis, on Oxford Street, to see for myself the positive impact that these and other changes have had on that really important British business.

[Nickie Aiken]

I thank the Minister for giving way yet again. I am interested in what she says about a great British company such as John Lewis, which is based in my constituency, and its flagship branch in Oxford Street, which is also in my constituency. Does she agree that, if we are to encourage people back to places such as Oxford Street—the nation’s high street—those places have to have a great offering? They have to look good, be clean and have brilliant shops, and not so many of the candy stores and that type of retail offer, which we seem to have at the moment and which is really disappointing. Also, the Mayor of London has a huge role to play in ensuring that there is a tourism offer, and the current Mayor is letting down London.

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

Order. May I just say that we are straying from the subject matter, which is tax-free shopping? Also, when you say “you,” that means me. I did not do anything—it is “the Minister”.