I will be calling Gavin Newlands shortly, but I warn Back-Bench Members that I will be imposing a five-minute time limit straight away—this is a short, 90-minute debate —to allow time for the Front-Bench spokespeople. When the time limit is in effect, there will be a countdown clock visible on the screens of hon. Members participating virtually and, of course, on the screens in the Chamber.
That the Travellers’ Allowances and Miscellaneous Provisions (EU Exit) Regulations 2020 (SI, 2020, No. 1412), dated 3 December 2020, a copy of which was laid before this House on 3 December 2020, be revoked.
We fully support the extension of duty-free shopping for people travelling to the EU, which is surely the thinnest of silver linings on the huge, grey thundercloud that is Brexit. However, the withdrawal of the VAT retail export scheme and the airside extra-statutory concession represents a real threat to thousands of jobs across Scotland and the UK.
The Treasury’s own consultation showed that an overwhelming majority of respondents were against the abolition of RES. It is trying to grab us with the HMRC guidance on the measures stating that the withdrawal
“may have a marginal impact on retailers in Great Britain.”
But even the Office for Budget Responsibility found that the Treasury has not taken into account the indirect impact on businesses outside the retail sector, showing the modelling undertaken by the Treasury to be fundamentally flawed and based on entirely incorrect assumptions and figures. The supply chain considerations are completely missing from the HMRC statement, with not a word about the manufacturers and suppliers outside of direct retail that will find their bottom line impacted by the disappearance of RES as we know it.
Nor has HMRC shown itself to be entirely accurate in its understanding of the fiscal impact of abolition. Its technical note conflates the number of sales with the number of passengers, underestimating the use of RES by up to 75%. It focuses on the direct benefits to London and Bicester Village, ignoring the indirect impact on travellers from regional airports transiting to their final destination outside the EU, thus underestimating the demand for the extra-statutory concession at these airports.
In short, the attempts of HMRC and the Treasury to justify their decision smack of a post facto race to find facts that fit their narrative, rather than a proper analysis of the pros and cons of both the retail export scheme and the extra-statutory concession. Anybody who thinks this is purely about high-end retailers and retail rent income at airports is ignoring the implications for businesses up and down the land, which are robbed of outlets and goods and seeing demand from overseas visitors shrivel when it should be increasing as we move out of the pandemic.
That is not a good starting point for the Treasury’s actions, and it does not take a world-leading economist to see that two of the industries hardest hit by the pandemic are retail and aviation. The abolition of RES is another blow to each of them. It is perhaps not game-changing in isolation, but it is yet more chipping away at the foundations of employment in my constituency and right across the country.
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands), who speaks with such passion about regional airports and their importance. As Members can hear, I, too, am a user of regional airports, not least the fantastic Manchester airport, Liverpool John Lennon airport, and, I confess, Glasgow and Edinburgh airports as well. When a flight is offered with the options of those airports or Heathrow, the choice is clear for someone who is based in the north-west: off you pop to wonderful Scotland and say hi to our friends there.
I will speak to two dry-sounding but important measures in this statutory instrument. The first is extending duty-free sales to UK residents who visit the EU. For the first time in 20 years, we can have EU duty-free on our holidays. I will touch directly on the point that the hon. Gentleman has just made about supporting regional airports. In the last 20 years, who has not wandered through an airport at 3 o’clock in the morning ready to go on holiday and sighed at the duty-free, thinking that it would be a wonderful thing to clink on to the plane with, so that we were all prepared at the other end when we got to the apartment in Greece, Spain or any of the other wonderful holiday destinations that we share and visit with our friends in Europe? Great news: this is now possible. The opportunity to do a little bit of duty-free shopping will not only make a long wait for a flight at 3, 4, 5 or 6 in the morning more interesting, but it will also mean that we can directly support our local airports, which employ people and provide jobs, careers, lifestyles and communities for so many around Manchester, Liverpool and beyond. What else can I say?
What does this measure really mean? It means the return of personal allowances, which will be roughly quadrupled. In short, it means the return of the booze cruise, a long-lost institution that our proud nation has not been able to engage in. It may astonish Members to realise that when I was a child, there was much planning in our family for the biannual trip to France to get some wonderful wine, sparkling wine and beer. It was a military logistical operation, with months of planning, including considerations as deep as how many adults we could fit in the car, which of the smaller adults to fit the acquired goods around, and whether a Ford Sierra or a Ford Orion should be used to maintain the optimal packing-to-adult ratio.
There are countless examples of this Government leaving it until the last minute to make decisions about what arrangements would be in place following the end of the EU exit transition period. The trade deal with the EU was published only on Christmas eve and considered by Parliament on 30 December, leaving businesses frustrated and unable to prepare fully until the very last minute.
It seems even more frustrating and inexcusable for the Government to have left it so late to make arrangements for the post-transition period when the issues have been known about for years and were not the subject of any ongoing negotiations. Today’s regulations include a prime example The Government have had more than four years since the referendum to get this right, yet they announced their decision to end VAT-free retail both at airports and within Great Britain for all international travellers less than four months before it took effect, in the middle of a pandemic and with no plans to mitigate the economic damage. That is sadly typical of the panicked, last-minute approach that this Government, and in particular this Chancellor, have taken at every turn in recent months. People working in shops, airports, manufacturing and hospitality are going to be carrying the can for the Chancellor’s irresponsible choices.
We accept that, to comply with World Trade Organisation rules, the Government needed to make changes to the regime covering VAT-free shopping; they had to amend the approach to VAT-free and duty-free shopping so that the same rules would apply to both EU and non-EU visitors. As the UK can no longer distinguish between EU and non-EU visitors to Great Britain, the Government had a choice of two options for VAT-free shopping: Ministers could amend the VAT and retail export scheme and VAT-free retail at airports by either extending them or abolishing them for all travellers—and they chose the latter.
The decision has come as a body blow to jobs across the country in sectors desperately hoping that they might be able to start recovering from the impact of covid later this year. Clearly, the frontline jobs immediately affected are those in city centre or shopping village high-value retail, where international visitors make use of the retail export scheme, and in international airports around the country, including Heathrow, where many of my constituents are employed and where travellers make use of the relief on VAT on goods purchased airside. But it is not just those jobs that are set to be hit. Knock-on effects of the changes will threaten jobs in the factories and manufacturers of the goods that tourists come to buy, and in the hospitality sector, as the UK might expect fewer tourists as a result of the withdrawal of the concession. That impact on jobs, of course, comes amid the impact of covid-19, and many are in sectors with a disproportionately high proportion of young and BAME people relative to the wider population.
I make no apology for being delighted about the return of duty-free and the opportunities it brings to channel crossings. I welcome the jobs and investment that are maintained and boosted by the regulations. As a newly elected MP, I wrote to the Chancellor to ask for the return of duty-free and the Brexit boost it could bring to ports, ferry companies and cruise ships in areas like mine in Dover.
Like my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Katherine Fletcher), as a young woman there was perhaps nothing more exciting than putting on my dotted, spotted ra-ra dress and dancing across the sea on the ferry disco. As an introduction to exotic foreign climes, nothing could quite beat sashaying up and ordering one’s frites et mayonnaise at the chip van in France and Belgium. Shopping at Costco is but nothing compared to the delights of a Calais supermarché. From fancy liqueurs to the rather disgusting but vibrantly coloured sweets, it was a proper day out. It was, I am sorry to say, very many years before I realised that the more common word for the delightfully named “smorgasbord” on the now-defunct Sally Line was nothing more and nothing less than an all-you-can-eat buffet. Never have there been such delights as those rolled herrings! And forget Leonardo DiCaprio: so many friendships and relationships were rekindled and revitalised on the famous evening “Dance to France” between Dover and Calais and back again.
Like so much of the travelling years, while we have gained we have also lost; so focused on our destination, we have lost the pleasure of the journey, for a ferry trip is nothing less than a mini cruise. From ball pits and play areas for the little ones to video games, one-armed bandits and bars for the grown-ups, there is something for everyone to enjoy. And enjoyment is what it is all about—it is fun on the ferries. The regulations we are debating today will do so much to restore those simple and accessible pleasures. They will help to reboot our beleaguered hospitality and travel industries.
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Dr Lisa Cameron (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (SNP)
Before I begin to speak today, it is appropriate that I declare an interest as chair of the all-party group for textiles and fashion, and that I express my thanks to Heather Lafferty and Tamara Cincik of Fashion Roundtable, and Chantelle De Villiers from the British Retail Consortium, for their important work campaigning right across the United Kingdom on these matters.
One of the positives to come out of the pandemic has surely been the celebration of heroes in our local communities, care homes, schools and NHS. We do not often think of retailers, shop owners or small businesses across the UK as some of the heroes of the pandemic, but in reality we should. When we boil down the pandemic to its simplest principles, we see shops and local businesses doing everything they can, even to the point of closure, so that we can keep the most vulnerable in our communities safe. Many of these same businesses will be the first to face the economic and employment consequences of a 7.3% decrease in non-EU visitors to the UK, which is what is predicted by the Centre for Economics and Business Research as a result of the Government scrapping the VAT retail export scheme. So it would be remiss of me, as chair of the all-party group on textiles and fashion, not to focus my remarks today on the impact of this decision on the textile and fashion industry across Scotland and across the United Kingdom.
The Government have gone to great lengths to stress their commitment to levelling up the economy out of the pandemic and to boosting the economic performance of the cities and regions of the United Kingdom way beyond London. In their exit from the VAT retail export scheme, however, it would appear that the Government have fallen at the first hurdle. The Evening Standard reported before Christmas that £500 million of tax-free shopping takes place in over 12,000 stores outside London each year. Fashion Roundtable estimates that the fashion industry in Scotland is made up of nearly 2,000 businesses and employs 30,000 people. In 2019, £92 million in VAT-free fashion purchases were made in Edinburgh and a further £23 million in VAT-free fashion purchases were made in Glasgow and surrounding areas. Each of these purchases supports our high streets, businesses and jobs—high streets that need every purchase to survive at this time, businesses that are at the heart of local communities and jobs that help to provide for families and loved ones.
Hundreds of employees in my constituency are reeling already from the announcement of Boohoo’s takeover of Debenhams and the lack of investment in bricks-and-mortar stores in our town centres. Every single one of them is facing untold uncertainty as to what the future holds, so Government must support the recovery of retail. It is my very present fear that thousands more will be affected across Scotland if we fail to do everything in our power to support our high streets and those who work in them.
I am sure that every Member of the House would want the UK to have a fair and dynamic tax system that responds to the needs of UK citizens and reflects the economic circumstances of the time. In order to achieve that, our tax regulations must evolve and adapt, supporting society’s wider objectives and strengthening our local and national finances.
It is impossible not to recognise the enormous changes that have taken place in UK society over the past year. Even if we were to set aside the impact of the pandemic, in the hope that we will soon be able to return to what used to be normal life, the nature of the UK’s place in the world has changed—as has the way we interact with our global friends and partners. The removal of the VAT retail export scheme is a recognition of that change. We have left the EU and its customs union, and now find ourselves in a position to re-evaluate how we choose to apply taxes and duties to consumers engaging in international travel. We have the chance to treat people from different countries in the world equally, with no inherent tax status attached to being an EU visitor to the UK, compared with being a visitor from anywhere else.
A fair tax system should not allow wealthy international travellers relief from local taxes, as if they simply arrive, make purchases and leave the UK again without any other interaction with our economy. Those visitors benefit from a vibrant and thriving UK economy, our infrastructure and our connectivity, and our economy relies on everyone paying their share of tax. We do not give VAT refunds for hotel rooms, meals or theatre tickets, so why should a handbag or new coat be treated any differently? Consumer goods that are purchased in the UK should be subject to normal UK tax rules, and that should apply regardless of the country in which the purchaser happens to pay their income tax.
That is not to say that people are not welcome to come and spend their money here in the UK. We have some outstanding retail opportunities, and I hope that many people from around the world will visit this country again, once it is safe to do so. But it is not unreasonable to expect those visitors to pay a small amount in the process. It is also the case that, even for those who did use VAT RES, once the administration costs had been included, the savings accounted for less than 6% of the total trip costs on average. Given the wealth of those using the scheme, it is highly unlikely that the existing scheme affected their decision to travel to or shop in the UK. In fact, the USA, which has no countrywide VAT RES scheme, is the top country outside Asia on China’s most-visited list, ahead of any European countries that do have tax-free shopping.
The first casualty of covid was aviation. That saw the collapse of Flybe, the UK Government’s supine response to fire and re-hire practices, and other significant job losses. Whilst Edinburgh airport sits in the constituency of the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine), I have been supporting a number of my constituents in Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath who work at our national airport just across the Forth. They are airline pilots, cabin crew, ground staff, hospitality staff and facility staff. I have also been supporting Edinburgh airport’s chief executive, Gordon Dewar, and his team through letter writing, parliamentary questions, speaking in debates and joining the all-party parliamentary group. I have met twice with the aviation Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Witney (Robert Courts): in October and again in January this year. We have spoken about the need for a comprehensive aviation recovery strategy and why that is absolutely vital to the sector and to my constituents. Those discussions included, but were not limited to, the changes being made to airside sales. In all this time, I have not had a meaningful answer to any of my questions and concerns, or indeed those of the Edinburgh airport leadership team.
Given this sorry tale, and the absence of any strategy coming forward from the UK Government, it is hard to express the alarm, dismay, disbelief and anger when it emerged during the pandemic and just before the Brexit chaos that the UK Government planned to entirely remove VAT exemption on all airside sales, save for alcohol and tobacco. In tandem with that, the decision to abolish VAT RES for high-street sales was another significant blow.
This is at a time when we should be looking to strengthen and rebuild our economy, and plan for a recovery of tourism and related sectors. This decision will have an obvious and substantial negative impact on all the above. For example, at Edinburgh airport, the loss of VAT exemption for airside sales will result in over £7.6 million in lost revenue and place hundreds of further jobs in peril. It will place at risk a further £3 million of revenue from retail, fashion and other specialist shops. This is job-sustaining revenue and it cannot and will not be compensated by any stretch through duty-free liquor and tobacco.
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Edinburgh’s Princes Street, to take one example, has in the past few weeks seen Debenhams and the city institution Jenners fall victim to the pressure on retail, not just from the pandemic but from the wider trends across the sector. Removing RES will hit shopping in the city even harder and will cause even more jobs to be lost at a time when hundreds are already going.
Let me address the way in which the decision was taken. There was no engagement whatsoever with the Scottish Government or, presumably, with any other devolved Government, despite the obvious implications for our retail and tourism sectors. That is utterly disrespectful and counterproductive. I want to see all these decisions taken for Scotland by Scotland, and while we are part of this Union, it should be incumbent on the Treasury and every UK Government Department at least to speak to their counterparts in the devolved Governments about proposals that will have a serious and detrimental impact on their citizens. If they had engaged, they would have heard the Scottish Government’s real concerns. Scottish Finance Secretary Kate Forbes was clear as soon as she heard of the changes that she did not and does not
“believe that this is an appropriate juncture at which to make such an abrupt and significant change.”
The director of the Scottish Retail Consortium, David Lonsdale, raised the impact that the policy could have on tax-free shopping in Scotland’s cities. He said:
“The Finance Secretary’s comments are a timely and welcome intervention in support of city centres…The decision could cost Edinburgh city centre, for example, many millions in lost retail sales, let alone the knock-on impact on tourism…This decision would leave the UK as the only European country not to provide a tax-free shopping scheme to encourage tourism. There is a good reason no other European nation has taken this step, and we urge swift reconsideration.”
He is right. Other European countries will take advantage of this short-sighted decision.
Warnings are coming from right across the UK. The president of the UK Travel Retail Forum, Francois Bourienne, said the decision would put
“the UK out of step with travel retail systems around the world”
and
“completely disincentivises tourists to visit the UK and British passengers making purchases as they go on vacation abroad. It puts UK airports and travel retail at a substantial disadvantage against their European counterparts after Brexit. This will lead to significant additional job losses in the travel industry.”
Hand in hand with the abolition of the retail export scheme is the scrapping of the extra-statutory concession. Again, the consultation found overwhelming—in fact, near unanimous—support for the continuation of some form of the concession after Brexit, and again the Treasury ignored those responses. Again, we are seeing the chipping away of revenue streams that employ thousands of people throughout the country and are vital for many airports.
Regional airports depend on the revenue from airside shopping to a far greater degree than the Heathrows of this world—in fact, up to 40% of a smaller airport’s revenue is generated through retail, as a higher proportion of its passengers fly point to point rather than domestically through a hub such as Heathrow. The kicking away of this financial crutch at a time of huge pressure on the finances of airports is another blow to an industry that is reeling from the pandemic and, in the case of many regional airports in England, still dealing with the after-effects of the collapse of Flybe.
In Scotland, it is estimated that the abolition of the ESC will potentially result in the closure of most retail outlets at airports, and will result in lost revenue of around £20 million and the loss of hundreds more jobs that neither retail nor airports can afford. To quote the UK Travel Retail Forum again, it said:
“This could be the final nail in the coffin of several UK regional airports.”
At a time when the industry is on its knees, I am concerned that the UKTRF is right.
I want to see a sustainable future for our airports and aviation, but the more the Government unleash havoc for airport operators’ balance sheets, the more I am concerned for their future. It is also difficult to reconcile the Government’s position that continuing with the extra-statutory concession would be against World Trade Organisation rules with the fact that the Government’s own consultation document states that they were
“minded to extend airside tax-free sales”
at the beginning of the consultation process.
There is one way to mitigate some of the damage: the introduction of arrivals duty-free, as we see in operation around the world, including in all European economic area nations—Norway, Iceland and Switzerland—and as we know the European Union is actively considering. It is vital that we do the same. There are many reasons why this is a good idea, not least because it would support a beleaguered sector and help to safeguard jobs.
As I said, retail revenue cross-subsidises other operations and would help to fund new route development, which is critical to the future recovery of not just Glasgow but all our airports. It plays an absolutely pivotal role in supporting regional connectivity, the air travel side of which is worth £4 billion to the Scottish economy—the same as its value to London and the south-east. A report by Airlines UK found that in one year’s time, around 80% of the hundreds of routes lost to the UK aviation sector will be in the UK regional airports outside of London and the south-east. If the Government truly have a levelling-up agenda, they must do something to address that.
It is important to note that arrivals duty-free would have no impact on domestic sales of products; instead, such sales would represent the repatriation of duty-free sales that would otherwise happen outside the UK, where the passenger starts their journey. There would be no impact on tax revenue and no increase in the number of products entering the market, as travellers’ duty-free allowances would remain the same. Additionally, the introduction of arrivals duty-free stores would generate new jobs around the United Kingdom, providing further benefits to the economy through personal income and business taxation. It is not too late for the Treasury to see sense and reverse the decision, if the will is there among those on the Government Benches. The airports and retailers affected by these changes will also be willing to work together to modernise rather than ditch the retail export scheme and the extra-statutory concession.
I know that the Government would not want to be seen as the people behind the collapse of regional airports. Hitting the pause button on the plans would help to secure thousands of jobs that rely directly on these sales and thousands more at the airports across the UK that are at risk if those revenue streams are destroyed. I hope that the Minister will be able to share a positive response to the calls from me and from across the industry for a new approach to benefit the sector and the wider economy, not least because of the millions of pounds in revenue and the hundreds of jobs that the Department’s decision puts at risk at Stansted airport in her own constituency.
It is a bit of fun, and everybody must drink responsibly, but I massively welcome this. It will give those of us in the north the opportunity to make that six-hour journey down to Dover, go over on the ferry and see some of France, and use our personal allowances to sample something that is not available in the UK and bring it back, while having a bit of fun on a trip for the family. That is all encapsulated in quite a dry SI. I will not trouble the House longer, but the return of the booze cruise is here, and I say “Cheers!” to that.
Given the wide-ranging impact on jobs, it is shocking that the Government did not fully consider the jobs impact of the change before taking their decision. If they were serious about protecting jobs, they would have looked closely at the wider impact of those changes across all sectors affected and throughout every part of our country, yet there is no evidence that they did so, and many of the assumptions in the calculations that they did carry out have been questioned by people respected in the industry. In its reasoning for taking the decision, the Treasury relied on a number of calculations and assumptions about the impact of the change, more detail about which they included in a technical note issued to stakeholders. There is deep concern among stakeholders that many of the crucial figures were flawed, as the Government overestimated the cost of the option of extending the retail export scheme to EU visitors and underestimated the negative impact of ending the scheme for others.
Those affected and their representative organisations, such as Value Retail, have questioned the Treasury’s assumption that non-EU visitors spend the same amount of money as EU visitors, thereby producing flawed calculations of the cost of the alternative course of action, which was extending the retail export scheme to all. They also question the assumption that the low value of many discounts means that they are insufficient to change visitor behaviour, so removing the retail export scheme will not affect how much people spend or their decisions about spending time in the UK.
Given our concern about the impact on jobs, I wrote to the Office for Budget Responsibility ahead of the Chancellor’s spending review in November 2020, asking it to scrutinise the figures and assumptions that the Treasury was using to justify its decision to end the VAT retail export scheme and to consider its wider impact on jobs. The OBR’s reply appeared to undermine what Ministers have been saying. For example, in reply to one of my written parliamentary questions, the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, who will be responding in this debate, said that
“the OBR also looked at this package in the round when assessing the indirect impact on the economy”.
However, in its reply to me the OBR seemed to play down the extent of its analysis, confirming that it had not considered the indirect effects of ending the VAT retail export scheme on jobs. Furthermore, it said:
“our remit prevents us from considering impacts on disadvantaged groups or particular geographical areas”.
It seems clear that, despite his or his Ministers’ protestations, the Chancellor went into this decision with his eyes closed: yet again, he failed to consider the impact of his irresponsible decisions on people’s jobs.
My question to the Minister today is direct and I would welcome a direct answer. We know that the Government’s decision to end VAT-free shopping will have a significant impact on jobs. It is also clear that the Government took the decision without fully knowing what the impact on jobs would be after the new arrangements were put in place. As the measure has now come into force and analysis of it no longer has to be based on assumptions alone, I would like to ask the Minister to commit the Treasury to reviewing the impact of the changes to VAT-free shopping on jobs across different sectors and across different parts of the country, and to report back to Parliament ahead of the March Budget. If the Minister will not commit to doing so today, I would be grateful if he committed to raise it with the Chancellor and to ask him to update the House.
Since the virus hit, all of us have learned again the closeness of our family members and the nearness of that neighbourhood walk. When the borders open and the pandemic retreats, let us not forget the wonder and beauty of all that is around us and with us. At that time, I hope that my hon. Friend will join me to see one of the true wonders and beauties of our land: the white cliffs hoving into view from the duty-free ferry.
Tourism is indeed the beating heart of our high streets and of the fashion industry as a whole. However, tourists in search of high-end purchases from UK stores will show retailers and those employed by them very little loyalty if there is ample incentive to shop elsewhere. Scottish Enterprise estimates that the tourist industry in Scotland is made up of 15,000 companies employing 218,000 people. That is 15,000 companies and 218,000 people whose businesses and jobs could be affected as a consequence of tourists choosing to shop and visit elsewhere. For my local area and region surrounding the constituency, that is close to 30,000 people. The ripple effect of this decision to leave the VAT retail export scheme should not be understated. Tourists have come to the UK in search of retail purchases and, for the duration of their stay, let us not forget, they experience, visit and, most importantly for our debate today, buy so much more. We will lose their business to other destinations that continue to offer VAT-free shopping.
There are so many whose livelihoods depend on the distinctiveness and renown that come from being branded with the label “Made in Scotland”, the inspiration, flavour, taste or beauty of which cannot be found anywhere else in the world. These are businesses and jobs that depend heavily on the tourist trade. They have had their businesses decimated by covid-19, and they are relying on a strong rebound in tourist travel out of this pandemic for their very survival. So we should and must do everything we can to encourage tourism. Too many businesses and too many jobs in fashion, retail and further afield are at risk if we fail to do so.
International travel and high-end retail are luxuries, and it is wrong to deprive UK taxpayers in places such as Penistone and Stocksbridge to benefit international travellers. Preventing a loss to our tax base to the tune of £1.4 billion will help us to spread the benefits of international travel across the whole UK, instead of, as at present, concentrating it in London and the south-east.
On a final note, I am pleased that this statutory instrument provides duty-free sales for UK residents visiting the EU, for the first time in 20 years. The UK travel industry has suffered enormously over the past year, and this measure will support regional airports and ports across the country. Many more UK residents travel to EU than non-EU destinations in normal times, so the changes to duty free should significantly benefit local economies as well as, of course, consumers.
The regulations implemented by this statutory instrument are fair to the UK taxpayer, fair to travellers and fair to consumers, and as fairness should be at the heart of our tax system, I am pleased to support it.
This would have a considerable financial and economic impact at the best of times, but at the time of covid it threatens the very survival of the aviation industry and will cause untold damage in the wider economy, including job losses and slower economic recovery. That will be across these islands, not just in Scotland, but aviation enables much of Scotland’s economy, from tourism, business and education to culture and research. As Gordon Dewar of Edinburgh airport commented, aviation makes that possible, but we are
“not too big to fail.”
Brexit was an ill thought-out and massively damaging policy, seeing legislation such as this being implemented at the worst possible time for affected sectors. These intertwined sectors are already in survival mode. The hon. Member for South Ribble (Katherine Fletcher) may make light of the return of the booze cruise, but it is nothing to be celebrated when it is being paid for on the back of Scottish jobs and jobs across these islands, and the rather parochial view of the hon. Member for Dover (Mrs Elphicke) on this change and her appeal to such a narrow audience completely ignores that pernicious human impact beyond her back garden.
The creativity of contributions from the Government’s virtual Benches cannot camouflage the damage this will inflict. Brexit is an unmitigated disaster and the UK Government clearly care not a jot for Scotland’s wishes or our economic potential. This is but one of the compelling reasons why Scotland will very soon vote for independence and join the world.