Joe Robertson
MP for Isle of Wight East · Conservative · United Kingdom
“(3) In preparation of the report under subsection (1), the Secretary of State may have regard to any such measures or information that they consider appropriate, including— (a) an assessment of any variation in dementia services and outcomes between integrated care board areas, (b) information on workforce capacity, capability and trainin…”
“The clause fits into that and would require the collection of data on the provision of dementia services in health and social care. I do not propose to speak too long, but I do want to make a couple of remarks on the current situation, which sets these new clauses in context.”
“That will, of course, impact many more friends, families and carers who support those living with dementia. More than a third of people living with dementia in England do not have a formal diagnosis. Those who do receive a diagnosis live with the condition for an average of three and a half years before that diagnosis.”
“The data requested is imperative to ensuring that the Government can measure and monitor progress against relevant national targets, standards and guidance, including the new modern service framework on dementia, the forthcoming Care Quality Commission statutory guidance and outcome measures that may be set in future NHS operational plann…”
“I thank the Minister for pausing the MCA’s brutal decision about coastguard rescue officers, and for convening meetings on cross-Solent ferry transport to the Isle of Wight, which will start next month.”
“It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Lewell. These two new clauses, the latter of which is in my name, deal with the publication of an annual report detailing NHS and social care provision for dementia care and how the Government are performing against targets, standards and outcome measures set out in national guidance and…”
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“I thank my namesake for his intervention. I do not completely understand what he says, because the amendment refers to cultural barriers. He is absolutely right that we have to be careful when we mandate things, but the strength of the amendment is that it has a broad application and does not seek to mandate specific detail. I accept that it has more detail than the Bill, but its strength is that it gives some direction without being overly detailed. I again draw his attention to the fact that it asks the Secretary of State and the Department to identify and remove cultural barriers.”
“Of course, duties and requirements placed on a Secretary of State, such as those in clause 7, can be delivered only if we start with the proper collection of data and, in the interests of transparency, publish it. For that reason, I also support new clause 45.”
“That seems entirely sensible, it is something that I am sure any Government would want to do anyway, and it would add meaning, assessment and transparency to what is already in the Bill. New clauses 44 and 45 would do something similar in relation to the number of medical school places. As the shadow Minister said in response to an intervention, new clause 44 seeks to do only what the Government have already said they want to do. Hopefully, the Minister can give us some clarity on whether that is still the Government’s intention and, if it is, what aversion she has to including it in the Bill. Separately, new clause 45 seeks to establish a benchmark of data collection.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. Clause 7 says—I abbreviate: “The Secretary of State must exercise functions…with a view to ensuring that…there are sufficient people with appropriate education and training to meet the workforce needs of the health service, and…there is an effective system in place for the planning and delivery of education and training of people to meet those needs.” That is all very nice—who couldn’t agree with that?—but amendment 50, tabled by the shadow Minister, would add a means by which the public, in the interests of transparency, could make an assessment of that by requiring the Secretary of State to publish independently audited forecasts of the NHS’s workforce needs every five years.”
“After all, it would be preposterous to suggest that an adult could consent to their own child engaging in sexual activity, so how can they possibly consent to a child grappling with those ideas such that they administer a powerful drug to suppress their development and puberty? We have a Government who have taken the view, which I welcome, that an adult cannot possibly consent to their own child having a social media account because they are not in a position to assess all the harms. How, by extension, can they say that an adult is in a position to consent to their child taking powerful drugs that will suppress their puberty and sexual development? It lacks any sort of coherence. I urge the Government to think again.”
“I ask the Minister to address that point directly. Plainly, consent is meaningful only if a child understands all the ramifications. I challenge anyone to stand up and back the idea that a child under the age of 13, for example, understands what it is like to give up the possibility of fertility, to live a life in a different gender and to really understand, at that age, what gender means in its adult entirety. I turn now to the role of the parent. What parent can possibly say whether their child has been able to grapple with those issues in any meaningful way? They may be better placed than anyone else, but that does not mean that they can really form a judgment or view.”
“Society, through this place and the courts, has decided that children should not be engaging in sexual activity under the age of 16. That is not a fundamentally clinical issue; it is an issue around the emotional, psychological, moral and ethical impact on a child who does not fully understand what they are getting themselves into. When it comes to a child under 13, we have a law that says consent is impossible. Under 13, there is no such thing as consent to sexual activity; it amounts to what we might term statutory rape. However, in the trial we are talking about today, children under the age of 13—at the age of 12—are going to be asked if they have engaged in oral sex in the last year. That is something that is illegal—something that they cannot consent to by law. Why are they being asked a question like that in these clinical trials?”
“The clinical advice itself is disputed, but I accept the weight that the Government have placed on the Cass review, which was commissioned under the previous Government. It is right that the current Government place weight on that. This is much more than a clinical question, though—it is an ethical question, a moral question and a legal question—and the issues that need to be grappled with fall on the shoulders of the elected Members in this place. I want to explore one of the issues that I think is fundamental: the issue of consent. What can consent mean when we are talking about young children? What can it mean when we are talking about a parent giving consent for something to happen to their child? The issue of consent is not new. We have the legal age of consent for engaging in sexual activity.”
“I support an individual’s freedom to choose to live their life in whichever manner they want, subject only to the law. That includes someone’s right to want to live a life in a different gender identity to that which they were born with. But this debate is not about that; it is about administering powerful drugs to children. Although I have no direct experience of what it is like to want to live a life as somebody with a different gender identity, I have represented parents in the family court disputing their child’s gender identity—in one case, a child under that age of 10—in legal proceedings. There is an absolutist argument that I want reject: the argument that this is only a clinical question, and that politicians, decision makers and the Government must follow clinical advice.”
“A parent cannot consent to their child engaging in sexual activity and soon they will not be able to consent to their child having a social media account, so why does the Secretary of State think that a parent should consent to drugs being administered to their child to supress their puberty and alter their sexual development?”
“It is a pleasure to serve on the Committee with you in the Chair, Sir Jeremy. I echo and endorse all the comments made by the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham, who was comprehensive in setting out our position. I therefore speak from a broad consensus surrounding the Committee that the final days of NHS England as a body are here, and so be it, because there are advantages to be gained from its abolition. The Minister set out some of the leading reasons why she and the Government are abolishing NHS England. She referred to the growing bureaucracy, the unnecessary complexity, and the overlap of roles and responsibilities between the organisation and DHSC. She also spoke about being able to better focus on delivering care rather than navigating bureaucratic hurdles.”
“I and, it seems, all the other Committee members do not disagree with the fundamentals of what Government are trying to do; their reasons for doing this are broadly sensible, so who could disagree? However, because of the manner in which it is being done, I urge caution and a check on being too optimistic—just doing it and expecting all the good things to flow. It will take an awful lot more than simply passing the Bill to make the NHS the success that, to take the Minister at her word, she intends, wants and will do her best to achieve. Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned. —(Emma Foody.)”
“I wonder whether the Government’s plan to abolish NHS England has gotten in the way of equally large, and perhaps even more substantial, reforms, which might ultimately have made a much more meaningful difference to the delivery of not only healthcare but health and social care, as well as to the overall wellbeing, including financial wellbeing, of so many people in this country. Social care refers to people living with frailty or dementia, and the family carers, and families more widely, on whom that has an impact. Every decision made is a decision not made, given the resource and bandwidth of those whom any Government ask to implement change, such as the civil service, advisers and the hundreds or thousands of people who are relied on to deliver in their day-to-day job.”
“Member for Ilford North, talked about introducing a national care service. That was the Labour party’s big priority. Although Conservative Members and, frankly, the majority of the public were slightly sceptical of his intentions, we all agree that social care needs reform and that ultimately, the success of the NHS will be delivered only if we deal with the long-standing crisis in social care, which extends back three decades or more, as it is entirely dependent on that. Before the election, the priority was the national care service, but since the not-so-random date of 5 July 2024, when the right hon. Gentleman became the Secretary of State, he ceased to refer to reform of social care, and it seems once again to have been put on the back burner.”
“Plainly, no Government can do everything they want to do all at one time. It slightly surprises me that reorganisation of the NHS and doing away with NHS England has become such a major priority, considering it did not feature in the Labour party manifesto just two years ago. I do not seek to put words in the Minister’s mouth, but the gist of her evidence to this Committee was that within eight months of this Labour Government coming into power, they realised that NHS England had to go. Eight months is eight months, but it seems a short timeframe in which to decide to do away with a fundamental way that health is organised and delivered in this country. Going back to priorities, I recall that before the election, the former Secretary of State for Health and Social Care—then the shadow Secretary of State—the right hon.”
“The shadow Minister points to a much wider issue entirely relevant to the Government’s plans here: the more reorganisation we do, the more we shrink the bandwidth to deal with smaller and more operational problems because so much of the resource has been pulled in. In my area, although it is probably true everywhere, reorganisation of Department or Government responsibilities causes endless frustration that while Governments and politicians—I take some responsibility for my own side’s actions at times in the past in very limited ways—talk about reorganisation when so much can be done on what might be termed low-hanging fruit. I worry that the Government are missing out on opportunities here to make a much more meaningful difference day to day and much more quickly than this huge reorganisation will achieve. Everything is about priorities.”
“Oh dear, that is not an answer to the question I asked. My question was about the tax burden on the tourism sector in this country. National insurance is up, and we have new taxes on part-time work. An overnight visitor levy is in the pipeline, and there are extra taxes on air passengers and ferry passengers. This Government’s assault on the Great British holiday has been brutal. It is no wonder young people are struggling to find their first job. Will the Minister recommit to the Government’s target to have 50 million international visitors to the UK by 2030, and will she tell the Chancellor to cut the brutal tax regime in order to get us there?”
“All of that is part of a bigger landscape of quality of care, which the CQC is responsible for. The more that I looked at this issue and the more I spoke to people, I became less sure that it is analogous to the airline industry. It is much broader and more complex, and certainly the airline industry does not have 150 different regulators and quasi-regulators.”
“We are running out of time and this is a much longer conversation, but if I look at the specific examples that people bring up from the airline industry, it is about spotting some very specific things. An example was used at the Health and Social Care Committee about spotting a bolt that is not working properly. The equivalent of that within the NHS is actually something like the MHRA, which is separate. If we spot a drug, an anaesthetic machine or a cardiac device that is not working properly, that is for the MHRA, which is separate from the CQC. The CQC is there to be the independent regulator of the quality of care more generally, which is more the space that HSSIB has been in. HSSIB has been looking at things like the use of digital triage in general practice and corridor care, and it has done some work on surgical safety and so on.”
“Q HSSIB is obviously an investigator and CQC is obviously a regulator—two different roles. I suspect there was a good reason why you were asked how the CQC can be investigated by a body that becomes part of it. Are you aware that the Air Accidents Investigation Branch and the UK Civil Aviation Authority are separate? If you are, why should that fundamental separation, which benefits air passenger safety, not apply to the safety of patients in the NHS? Dr Dash: Yes, I am aware. The analogy is continually made—and it has been made several times—and to be honest, 20 years ago, I would have shared the view that healthcare was similar to airlines. Indeed, I did quite a lot of talks about that at the time. However, the more I have looked into it, the more I think there are limits to that analogy.”
“I think people’s understanding is that we share an awful lot more than we do, so there is a gap. People perceive that we are going to overshare, whereas actually this will allow us to come up to the level that we should be at.”
“We care about it, we hold it close to the care of the patient and we share it only when appropriate, but in our view to then be the data controller of other information is too much and is unmanageable for a general practice to do. Equally, our data is very personal to us, and we want to keep hold of that. We do not want our patients worrying about the stories that they tell us, so a model where we feed into something else and have responsibility for the bit that it is fed into sits more comfortably with the Institute of General Practice Management. Dr Dickson: I do not have much to add to that. The devil is in the detail of where it sits and how we reassure patients that we are trusted with their data—that we are sharing what they have given us appropriately for their health, but not for spurious reasons.”
“Q If responsibility for managing and safeguarding the single patient record is to sit with general practice, if that is what the Government want, can you tell us, Kay Keane, as chair of the Institute of General Practice Management, what the implication would be for workload, and particularly workforce, in practice management? Kay Keane: I think it is impossible, really, for me to understand that. It is a large part of our job already. As Dr Dickson said, we act as a small business. We do all the things that any other small business does, so being able to manage that record on top of that would take a huge amount of investment into general practice. I would argue that maybe the investment into general practice should not be on data, but should be in the wider workforce. We are really good at looking after our data now.”
“If a staff member is talking openly to HSSIB about a failure of governance in their organisation, and that is the same organisation that could decide whether they get stripped of their “outstanding” rating and downgraded to “good” or “requires improvement”, my concern is that some people may worry and say, “Maybe I shouldn’t be open, because this could affect my hospital’s rating.” Obviously, I would always want staff members to be completely open with HSSIB, but we have to be really careful that people still have confidence in the safe space function if this merger goes ahead.”
“Q The safe space principle is arguably under threat by the merging of HSSIB and the CQC. From the evidence you gave to the Health and Social Care Committee, I understand your argument that if you get rid of the independence of HSSIB, staff members who have witnessed wrongdoing and unsafe practices will not feel there is anywhere they can go, when they feel compelled to disclose things they see, where there is no consequence to them. Can you just comment on that? Sir Jeremy Hunt: Maybe I should just clarify, because I think Dr Dash referred to those comments. The CQC is incredibly important to hospitals and GP surgeries because it gives them a rating—“outstanding”, “good”, “requires improvement” or “inadequate”—and they really care about that.”
“It is not always easy for big institutions to go through all the work of evaluating qualitative work. It is easy to look at quantitative statistics, but the patient voice must be highly visible and central to policymaking. That was the basic idea behind the Bill: it would be about the patient and the patient voice, putting the patient right at the centre of the multiple discourses. As my colleagues have said, we should be totally transparent about priorities, impact and holding people to account. If all five of those principles are followed, it will work. If they are not followed, it will not.”
“The independence is vital, not just because of the quality of what Healthwatch produces, but because of the confidence that it gives people that they are speaking to an independent organisation. In the background, some communities distrust being critical about the care that they receive in case it rebounds on them. If the same organisation is responsible for marking its own homework, as you put it, that problem will be much greater than it has been in the past. In terms of what to do about it, I think that you stick to some basic principles. If we are moving forward positively, we have got to be locally driven. We must reach out to communities. They will not reach into us; we have to reach out to those communities and the individuals within them. I mentioned the value of qualitative evidence.”
“Q Professor Croisdale-Appleby, the local healthwatch on the Isle of Wight has proven invaluable in amplifying patient voice, gathering patient experience and helping those who are democratically elected—MPs and councillors—to hold health leaders to account. My concern about that function being folded into the ICB is that the ICB has often been on the sharp end of critical analysis by Healthwatch, and so the ICB will end up marking its own homework. We will lose the critical voice that has, I am sure, led to better decision making. How can we possibly resolve that fundamental issue, if Healthwatch is folded into ICBs? Professor Croisdale-Appleby: You make a pivotal and focused point.”
“That is not a good way to be running any kind of society or country. Those challenges—the lack of adequate funding of the means-tested system and the lack of any risk pooling for the population as a whole—lead directly to the kind of experience that you are describing in the Isle of Wight, where there is simply excess demand and so we are trying to ship people across to the mainland. It is a reflection of the fundamental challenges that we have ignored for 35 years.”
“This is the one risk that is not pooled, and the reason is that the state does not, and the private sector cannot. The reason the private sector cannot is that it is too far ahead for a private insurance market to deal with it, so only the state can pool the risk. If there is any area where the case for social insurance is absolutely clear, it is social care; the case is even more powerful in social care than it is in health. At the moment we have a situation where often people will feel that the best thing that can happen to them, if they think they might have a social care need, is that they die before too long. It is a bit like standing in the middle of the road with a lorry driving towards you and hoping that the best thing that might happen is that you die before it hits you.”
“The first is that the means-tested bit of it, where we say, “If you don’t have any resources of your own, the state will look after you,” must be a minimum for any humane society. Essentially every year for at least the last decade, the Treasury has announced emergency funding for that in year. That money then does not get spent well. Honestly, if you are announcing an emergency package every year for 10 years, it is not an emergency package. You should wake up, pay attention, have a mature response and fund that system properly. That is the minimum. The second is that the only big risk we all face that is not pooled is social care. Our risk of healthcare is pooled by the state, our risk of having a car accident or our house burning down is pooled by private insurance.”
“Well, I do have an immediate answer, which is that, as far as I can see, it is nothing very substantial. The single patient record offers some prospects here, and it is terribly important for people receiving social care, which again reflects how much longer we are living. There is much more multiple morbidity now. Many of the people who can and are benefiting from social care will have quite complicated medical experiences and histories. That is the kind of group that could particularly benefit from a single patient record, so that we are not having inappropriate prescription and so on. That is going to help, but it will be a second-order issue. Let me be very blunt. There are two fundamental challenges facing the social care system.”
“Q Hospital pressures on the Isle of Wight are particularly severe, and part of the way of dealing with so-called corridor care is for the hospital and local authority to look at discharging some frail patients to the mainland, including those living with dementia, which is plainly not a solution by anyone’s normal interpretation. Is there anything in this Bill, notwithstanding that it does not deal with the fundamental problems of social care, not only that can help to resolve those sorts of situations, but that could help to resolve them if it went a little further? I am looking for opportunities to use the Bill to try to do a little more in and around discharge and social care. Sir Andrew Dilnot: That is a very good question, to which I do not have a very immediate answer.”
“T7. Coastguard rescue officers are brave men and women who work on the frontline to save lives, keep our coastline safe and, at times, arrive on the scene of small boat crossings. It is therefore shameful that the Maritime and Coastguard Agency has decided to strip them of the small payment they receive and rehire them as unpaid volunteers. Will the Minister meet me, my constituent Martin Groom and other brave frontline CROs to discuss a way forward and save the coastguard as we know it from collapse?”
“The crisis in social care is particularly bad in my constituency on the Isle of Wight, partly because of our unique geography but also because the Government have reduced funding to our local authority. Our council is now looking at discharging patients to the mainland, away from family and friends, which is completely unacceptable. Will the Government recognise our unique challenges as an English island and help provide a social care solution that recognises the challenges that we face?”
“Southern Water is preparing to dump sewage on a beach in Bembridge, on the Isle of Wight, in a new location. The Environment Agency says that that is okay because there is an old combined sewer overflow pipe there, notwithstanding the fact that it has not been used in decades. Does the Minister agree that that is unacceptable? If she does, what assistance can she and her Government provide to stop this from happening?”
“I beg to move, That this House has considered Government support for seasonal hospitality businesses in coastal areas. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stuart. This debate concerns a set of issues that affect about one third of UK constituencies directly—constituencies with a coastline, including estuaries. It is therefore not a niche set of issues that affect only my constituency on the Isle of Wight, although they are vital for my constituency. It is a set of issues that go to the heart of so many constituencies in our island nation and so many out-of-the-way communities with long-standing structural challenges. I am grateful to cross-party colleagues who are attending this debate.”
“I agree with my hon. Friend; I will join him in that call. Indeed, he has dealt with an element of my speech nice and early, so I thank him for doing so. According to UKHospitality, the sector accounts for around 10% of all UK jobs nationally. In tourism-led coastal communities it provides as much as 50% of local employment. On the Isle of Wight, tourism accounts for 38% of economic activity and is the biggest employment sector locally. When the sector suffers, coastal communities suffer in a way that is greater than elsewhere. Coastal areas have faced challenges for decades, with cheap competition from holidays abroad, changing holiday preferences, an increase in the relative cost of travel, older population demographics, fewer job opportunities, and a lack of investment in infrastructure.”
“I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman, who is ahead of me: I will address the issue of business rates and VAT presently. There are plenty of green shoots, however, in many of the communities, and brilliant local leaders trying to drive change, such as Lawrence Bates at the Wildheart Animal Sanctuary in Sandown, and Ian Boyd, founder of the Common Space. Start-ups and small businesses in hospitality are a major driver of regeneration and innovation, for example the Point in Bembridge, Braai in Brading, and the Sandown Boulevard street food market. But the Government have a role in creating an environment for hospitality to thrive.”
“I agree with the hon. Gentleman, who is also ahead of me: I will address the tourism tax in my speech. As I say, the Government have a role in creating an environment for seasonal hospitality to thrive, but in my view this Government have done the opposite. I do not accuse the Government of setting out to make life harder for tourism and hospitality in coastal areas, but I do hold them responsible for being careless about how their policies, in particular taxation, have fallen on communities such as mine. It is time for the Government to recognise that and make amends.”
“How can they do the right thing now if they do not recognise the harm that is being caused and felt from their own tax policies? Some of the most significant damage done by the Government is to the employment opportunities for young people. Youth unemployment is up; indeed, it is now higher than in the period coming out of covid. The Government’s hike in national insurance, extending it to more part-time work, and changes to the minimum wage that reduce the competitive advantage of employing young people are also major drivers of that unemployment. It is not just theory; we are seeing the real-world consequences in the data and in our communities.”
“I agree with the hon. Member that there needs to be long-term support, but also immediate relief. Again, he pre-empts some of the points I am going to make—I realise that my introduction was perhaps a bit longer than it should have been, considering that other Members are making all the excellent points that I am about to. Since the 2024 Budget, the hospitality industry has lost more than 100,000 jobs. Between January and March of this year alone, the equivalent of three hospitality businesses closed every single day. The sector was hit with a £3.4 billion annual cost increase from that Budget. The 2025 Budget added more through business rate changes and wage increases. It is therefore hardly a surprise that we have seen job losses on this scale. The Government are refusing to take responsibility.”
“This is an overnight visitor levy, which is the wrong policy at the wrong time. Coastal tourism visits have already fallen by 10% since April last year. Analysis by Oxford Economics suggests that if a 5% levy of the kind operating in Edinburgh was fully introduced by 2030, we would see a £1.8 billion reduction in tourism spending, 33,000 jobs being lost and 9 million fewer nights being spent in accommodation. These are not small margins. In coastal communities, where summer trading keeps businesses viable through the winter, the damage would be concentrated and severe.”
“In the past 2 years, many of the taxes we pay to the Government have increased drastically, our gas and electricity has increased by almost double, the cost of ingredients has increased, some by as much as quadruple, wages have risen rapidly and business rates have increased.” They go on to say: “We have made the decision to leave the industry that we love and close the Bugle down.” The Pointer Inn, in Newchurch, has taken aim at the Chancellor herself: “The absolute legend Rachel Reeves”. It also took aim at her “nice pub tax”, adding an AI image of what the pub might look like shortly. Then there is the Hare and Hounds, which is located just outside Newport and dates back to the 1730s, but has now been shut. I turn to the holiday tax, or the visitor levy, which has already been referred to.”
“They are jobs that give a young person in Ryde, Shanklin or Ventnor their first pay slip and their first employer reference. There are 67 pubs in Isle of Wight East, four breweries, and 1,200 jobs in the sector, generating £40 million for the local economy. Nationally, the pub and brewing sector contributes £34 billion and generates £17 billion in tax. Those are not small numbers. Of course, pubs are about more than just pints. A third of drinks sold in hospitality are spirits, such as Mermaid Gin on the Isle of Wight. When distillers suffer, pubs suffer and vice versa. The Bugle Inn in Brading sadly closed its doors for the final time just four days ago. Jasmine and Daniel were clear about the reasons why: “We have become another victim of the current pub crisis.”
“I would urge the hon. Member to do all that she can to encourage her ministerial colleagues to improve the lot for young people. The fact remains that youth unemployment is going up and coastal communities are suffering. I would welcome any intervention that the hon. Member can bring about through her powers of persuasion. In coastal communities, hospitality provides flexible, accessible, seasonal work that simply does not exist in the same volume anywhere else in the local economy. More than half the sector’s workforce is part time. For many young people—students, carers, people managing health conditions—that flexibility is what makes work possible. Job postings for temporary hospitality work were down by 25% in 2025, year on year. For many people, summer jobs are their first job.”
“The hon. Gentleman is right, we need both. Our tourism and hospitality sector is one of the most highly taxed tourism and hospitality sectors, compared with our European neighbours, who already have a cost-competitive advantage.”
“I understand that the hon. Lady is trying to sell her own Chancellor’s policies, but this support is pretty thin—a short, indeed temporary, VAT tax giveaway, set against the severe damage done by two successive Budgets, which runs into the tens of billions of pounds. On business rates, the hospitality sector pays 10% of all eligible business rates but accounts for only 2% of relevant economic activity. That equates to an overpayment of £1.8 billion. The Government legislated for a 20% discount; what they have delivered is a 5% discount. Without a sector-wide solution, 963 restaurants and 574 hotels could face closure this year, and we are already seeing closures.”
“I therefore call on the Government to support seasonal hospitality in coastal areas by scrapping their plans for the overnight visitor levy, introducing a national insurance holiday for businesses employing young people and those not in employment, education or training, and scrapping business rates for thousands of hospitality businesses up and down the country permanently. The Government should stop trying to convince businesses, whose rates are going up, that they are going down—businesses know what their rates are. They should urgently publish the promised visitor economy growth strategy and disapply the ETS tax on car ferry travel to the Isle of Wight, bringing it in line with every other UK island that will pay nothing. Our hospitality businesses are resilient and have survived a great deal, but resilience has limits.”
“Instead, for the Isle of Wight, the Government have increased the already rip-off costs of crossing the Solent by car—of course, the Isle of Wight is completely reliant on ferries for transport to and from the island—and have done that by introducing a new emissions trading scheme tax, which they have not applied to Scottish islands with smaller populations and have not applied in full to Northern Ireland with a bigger population. It is insulting and inexcusable. The Government say that they want coastal communities to succeed, but a whole string of policies and tax-and-spend decisions do not support that aim. Indeed, many directly undermine it.”