YouSaid · the spoken record
Damian Hinds
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On the record 2010–2026
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“My word! My hon. Friend puts it in very striking terms. [Interruption.] I see the Minister indicating that he has heard her question, so I think it is right that I defer to him to say a word about the matter when he makes his speech. As the hon. Member for Eltham and Chislehurst and other colleagues have said, this is not the first compensation scheme that has been set up. Obviously every case is somewhat different and involves different categories of harm, but it seems that every time this happens, processes and systems have to be set up and time is thereby lost. We want lessons to be learned from this scheme, but they should also have been learned from previous schemes.”
House of Commons18 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Further to the Minister’s answer to my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis), will he take the opportunity of the new NPPF to make it absolutely clear that if someone wilfully ignores—not inadvertently, but deliberately and wilfully—the need for planning consent, they will not subsequently get retrospective permission?”
House of Commons15 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I welcome this morning’s announcement. The platforms are not now off the hook: the Online Safety Act 2023 operates until the age of 18, which is the age to which the Children Act 1989 requires protection to be in place. On the announcement, what is the net effect of exempting messaging services but blocking communication from strangers, if a messaging service allows anybody who knows a person’s phone number to add them to a large messaging group?”
House of Commons15 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We need to start by knowing on what basis the Government made their decision. We cannot very easily argue with it if we do not know what it is. The letter from the 16 council leaders mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) makes a very reasonable ask: that we should know the Department’s own analysis and feasibility assessment. I say to the Minister simply: please, show us your workings.”
House of Commons10 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Minister has spoken of how identities grow over time. These are entities that have been in place for at least 50 years, around which other organisations have organised themselves. Charities and other public sector organisations organise themselves around district and borough boundaries, and these changes will inconvenience them. If the Government insist on proceeding, the process will need time and sober assessment, and for local authorities to come together to find consensus on the way forward. This is not a trivial question; it is about some of the most important things in our lives, such as the care for our ageing mums and dads and for the children with the highest needs and vulnerabilities. It is a long-term decision. This will not have an effect for three or five years; it will have an effect for decades.”
House of Commons10 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Although there will be some economies of scale in things moving from district level to unitary level, there will also be diseconomies of scale in things moving from county level to unitary level, and those are the things with the biggest cost pressures in our system. People worry what this will mean for housing. All the local plan work was done on the basis of the existing district councils; now, that will not work. People worry about the loss of local knowledge. Parish councils are concerned about the implications for them. Crucially, there is the question of identity and cohesion. I already mentioned Horndean, Rowlands Castle and Clanfield being split off into Portsmouth, and this is also a concern, as my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East said, for parts of the New Forest, for Test Valley and for Winchester.”
House of Commons10 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In theory, the fewer the unitary councils, the bigger the cost savings, but Hampshire county council and my district council in East Hampshire preferred the middle option, which was to have four authorities—a balance between delivering savings and reducing risk. There has been a big disagreement about the analysis of those different options by different people looking at them. Crucially, we do not know the Government’s own analysis of the different options for carving up Hampshire and why they chose the one they did. We do know that, of the different local authorities, two on the mainland are smaller than the 500,000 minimum. Of course, the Isle of Wight is smaller again, although there are unique circumstances there. We know that there are substantial costs.”
House of Commons10 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Nick Adams-King, the leader of Hampshire county council, set out a summary of conditions for change, including that any new structure must be sustainable financially, operationally and democratically. He said: “It must be capable of delivering high-quality services” and “resilient enough to manage demand in adult social care, children’s services and SEND.” Crucially, he said, it must have “a balanced tax base” and “reflect real communities”, and “not create winners and losers by stripping growth, infrastructure and income from area to shore up another.” I do not think I could put it any better than that, but that is not what has happened. There were three different options in Hampshire, with different rationales for them.”
House of Commons10 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) mentioned, the Government set out clear criteria for reorganisation, which included a focus on sustainability of high-quality services and a minimum scale of 500,000—that number did not come out of nowhere; it came from a serious piece of work by PricewaterhouseCoopers about the minimum scale needed to deliver services—and, crucially, that the building blocks of the new organisation should be existing districts and boroughs. It was on that basis that local leaders engaged in the process. They were not clamouring for it—leaders in Hampshire were not knocking down the door of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government saying, “Please reorganise us!”—but they engaged in good faith in the process.”
House of Commons10 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Friend the Member for Melton and Syston (Edward Argar) said, it is a question that literally no one was asking, and the answer was not in the Labour manifesto. Even if we accept that there can be reorganisation, we must ask: “On what basis?” In East Hampshire, this plan will break up communities, take away local identities and put people into new artifices. It will take the people of Horndean, Clanfield and Rowlands Castle and put them into a new super-council area centred on Portsmouth, with the rest of East Hampshire going to a vast area called the Mid Hampshire unitary authority, all for an uncertain and quite likely negative return. In plain English, that means that local people will end up paying more. As my right hon.”
House of Commons10 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is a pleasure to see you in the chair, Dr Murrison. I congratulate and thank my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston (Neil O’Brien) for securing this important debate. It was also a pleasure to hear from everybody’s honourable friend, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). It is not the first time he has come here and said, “I know that Northern Ireland is not covered by this, Minister, but perhaps our experience can be instructive,” but boy was he right today. There are two key questions, and he highlighted the importance of the first: “Why do this at all?” With all the attention it needs, it will take away from other priorities, at a time, in particular, when we are about to have huge changes to the system for special educational needs and disability. There are also the costs involved. As my right hon.”
House of Commons10 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“This is an important piece of work from Alan Milburn, but what principles will underpin the Government’s approach? Does the Minister think that, other things being equal, if we increase the cost of employing people, then that will come at the expense of jobs? Does he think that, with slack in the labour market, if we do things such as reducing probation periods at a time when the cost of employing younger people without experience is going up anyway, that will mean that those young people are less likely to be given the opportunities and the vacancies that exist?”
House of Commons2 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I thank the Paymaster General for his personal work in this area. The increase in the unethical research award is a material improvement, and I am particularly thinking of the former pupils at Treloar’s. However, there is still some uncertainty in the community about the evidence that will be required to qualify for the severe psychological harm element under the special category mechanism. Could he confirm how that will work, and will IBCA have discretion and flexibility about what evidence will be required?”
House of Commons23 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The biggest cost has been the foam inserts, with numbered slots in which each child puts their phone, but the sum total cost is very reasonable. I want to answer the hon. Member for Banbury (Sean Woodcock), who is no longer with us, so to speak. He asked why had we not taken this measure when we were in government. That is a perfectly reasonable question. There are two reasons: first, the issue has become more acute; and, secondly, the attitude of headteachers. It has changed. We have gone from headteachers and their representative bodies saying, “The best way for you to support me in this school is not to impose a national ban,” to them saying the exact opposite—that the best way to support schools and headteachers is to have a ban written into law.”
House of Commons22 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“If it vibrates, you might actually feel it, physically; but even if you do not, you feel that compulsion towards it. The only way to make a school truly free of the scourge of mobile phones is to have them away from the child. The “not seen, not heard” approach does not work. The main argument for saying that we have to allow “not seen, not heard” is about cost. I understand that. Pouches, which a couple of colleagues have mentioned, do have a cost, but we do not have to do pouches. There are other ways of doing this. I mentioned the Petersfield school in my constituency, which has a phones-away-from-children ban, and which uses a simple device—a plastic box that can be purchased in most large-format Swedish retailers. That is locked away in a cupboard, along with a number of other boxes, until the end of the day.”
House of Commons22 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“What children tell us, both informally and when they are answering surveys about the actual use of mobile phones in schools, is how often lessons get interrupted, teachers are filmed, and bullying and other stuff happens at break times and lunchtimes. We need to act. Of course, there can be individual exceptions for those using assistive and adaptive technology, for young carers, and for others, but the one exception that we must not have is on the type of ban. The critical question is about having a policy of “not seen, not heard”. Every school in the country, pretty much, already has at least that, but I am afraid that it is not effective as a ban. If you have this thing in your pocket, or in your bag at your foot, it is still there, and you feel its presence.”
House of Commons22 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Government said for so long that they would not ban phones in schools because there should be some discretion for headteachers, but they are going to tell them precisely how many items of branded school uniform they are allowed to specify, and will tell them that in secondary schools that could include a tie, but in primary schools, for some bizarre reason, it cannot. I am pleased that the Government have partly seen the light. The Minister, whom we all like and respect, said last week that the problem had already been solved—and presumably it has now been re-solved, as the Government have come back to the issue—but I have to say that that is not what children say.”
House of Commons22 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“They would still, by the way, be very relevant to child safety. I remind the House that our duty to children extends to those aged up to 18, as per the Children Act 1989 and our commitments to the United Nations. There are issues to resolve about a ban—exactly where the lines should be drawn; exactly what is in and what is out—and yes, of course, the Government have to consult on those issues, but they do not need to consult further on the principle of whether the country and the House of Commons want a ban on young people under the age of 16 accessing social media, a conclusion that so many other countries are also coming to. On mobile phones, throughout the progress of the Bill, I have found a remarkable contrast.”
House of Commons22 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is a pleasure to have heard the last few speeches, which made very important points, but even with five minutes, time is still short for me. I will speak briefly about a couple of aspects of social media and mobile phones. On social media, let us get on with it. We have had this issue come back from the Lords multiple times, and we can do this. There is a glaring logical flaw at the heart of the Government’s argument for not taking action—we have also heard it from a bunch of Labour MPs today—which is, “We can’t do this one thing, because there are some other things we could do as well.” That just does not hold water. All those other things—around gaming, other types of applications, chatbots, addictive features and so on—could be additive to a ban on social media for children under the age of 16.”
House of Commons22 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is true that the effects of the falling birth rate have been felt most so far in places such as Hackney, but it is coming to many more places, and the effect will be felt in a much more magnified way, particularly in small rural schools. Does the Secretary of State accept that the funding formula will have to change away from being so heavily reliant on a per capita amount, so as to support our small rural schools?”
House of Commons20 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I think I just heard the Minister say, “We have already solved this problem.” I do not know if any other colleagues heard that. She said that she has written to every headteacher in the country, and it is absolutely the right thing to be in contact with them. Has she heard back from any headteachers or headteacher representative bodies, who say that this ban would be so much more straightforward if it were written into law, because of the difficulties that arise with a minority of parents? Headteachers say how much easier it would be for their school and their authority in their school if this ban were written into law.”
House of Commons15 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“There are unanswered questions about definitions, what should be in and what should be out, and exactly where the boundary lines are. Parents sometimes talk about social media in a way that professionals might not; parents might exclude certain messaging apps, for example. There are questions to be resolved, but the Government consultation is not just about that; it is about the “whether”, as well as the “how”. By all means, let us consult to get those technical points right, so that the measures are bullet-proof and future-proof, but today is the day that we could say, like those other countries did, “We are doing this. We are going to protect our children—and yes, there is still work to be done on exactly how that will fall out.” Does the hon. Gentleman agree?”
House of Commons15 April 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We can reverse that position—but not if we price ourselves out of contention.”
House of Commons25 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It brings people together for everything from family reunions to forging new business relationships and partnerships. Travel is good for the soul: people can discover new places, people and experiences, and there is opportunity to unwind and to see the world differently—literally—and as a result are able to think differently. Domestic tourism is good for all those reasons. Of course, it is also very important for individual colleagues’ constituencies and their local economies.”
House of Commons25 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I will focus on one that is not quite as easy to land, but that I think is just as important: the role of inbound international tourism into our country, the contribution that makes to the economy and the necessity not to hamper that. There is a natural inclination among humankind to want to see more of the world. As societies, and the world as a whole, get richer, one thing we can guarantee is that travel and tourism will grow—in fact, they grow faster. For every 1% of world GDP growth, we see between 1.5% and 2% of growth in world tourism. Travel and tourism become an ever-enlarging part of the world economy, and—this is relevant at a time when we often worry about structural changes coming to labour markets—they are largely, although not entirely, AI-proof. Travel is also just a good thing.”
House of Commons25 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The proposed visitor levy is another measure that was not in the Labour manifesto—indeed, up until very recently, Ministers were actively saying that they would not introduce it. There has been limited debate on it and, although there has been a consultation, it was on how, not whether, the levy should be implemented. There are many different aspects to think about. There are the effects on the cost of living—it would push more people to take holidays abroad rather than staying at home—and the effects on youth unemployment and local economies. I am sure colleagues across the Chamber will make a number of those points; they are relatively straightforward points to land.”
House of Commons25 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“This subject touches on a number of Departments: the Department for Culture, Media and Sport is the sponsoring Department for tourism, but the debate is also relevant to the Department for Business and Trade, because of the trade considerations and export earnings; the Department for Transport, for obvious reasons; the Department for Work and Pensions, as tourism is one of the biggest employers in the country; the Home Office, which issues the visas; the Foreign Office, which is responsible for our international relations and soft power; the Cabinet Office, which owns the GREAT campaign; and, of course, the Treasury, which takes an overall view of taxation and is responsible for ensuring economic growth.”
House of Commons25 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I beg to move, That this House has considered the proposed visitor levy in England. It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Efford. It is also great to see the Minister in her place; we have a very highly regarded Minister to respond to the debate. She is a Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government Minister, but she will be responding on behalf of the entire Government, as Ministers always are when responding to debates in Parliament.”
House of Commons25 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“However, while they are here, they spend money not just on their travel and accommodation, but on their food and beverages, their purchases and activities, and on all those things they are paying tax and contributing to the Exchequer.”
House of Commons25 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“That is one of a number of worries I have about this proposal; I am grateful to the hon. Member for putting it in such a rational and straightforward way. I was coming on to say that international inbound tourism scores even more highly because, counterintuitively, tourism into this country is an export. In classical Keynesian economics—if I may appeal to the Government side of the House in that way—it is an injection into the circular flow of the economy. It is not spend that is displaced from some other activity; it is a net increase in economic activity in our country, which means that it is a net creator of jobs. For the Exchequer, tourism is particularly attractive because tourists are on average very low users of public services.”
House of Commons25 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Of course, that is particularly driven by London, which is a very high-value market, but overall, tourism is our third largest services sector by export earnings, and comparable to goods sectors such as automotive and pharmaceutical. We do inbound tourism well, then; but tourism is also a competitive market and the reality is that we are not doing as well as we used to. We are doing well, but worse. Over the last 30 years, the UK’s market share of world tourism has tumbled. It has come down by something like half.”
House of Commons25 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Britain is also the birthplace of more sports than most of us could name if we were prompted to do so in 60 seconds. There is also the draw of screen “on location” sites, as we have recently seen in the “Starring Great Britain” campaign, west end theatre, live music and much more. There is also the small matter of the English language—and believe it or not, even the weather actually acts in our favour. The fact that so much more of our inbound tourist infrastructure is indoor means that our tourist season is much longer, and we have considerably less seasonality in our tourist numbers, than many of our competitor nations. All those things help to explain our success. We are the seventh or eighth biggest country in the world by tourist arrivals, but we are even higher—third in the world, in fact—for tourist receipts.”
House of Commons25 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I do agree; the hon. Member makes some very good points about national insurance contributions, which I will go on to talk about further. He also makes some very good points about looking at the set of taxes as a whole—we cannot just look at a bed tax or a tourism tax without thinking about all the other taxes. However, if I may, I promise him that I will come on to those matters later. Inbound tourism is something that we are rather good at as a country. How could we not be, when we have great cities such as London, Manchester, Edinburgh, York, Bath and Brighton, as well as the lakes, the Peaks, the moors, the dales and the beautiful South Downs, part of which I have the privilege of representing? There is also our literary heritage, not least Alton and the village of Chawton in East Hampshire, the home of Jane Austen.”
House of Commons25 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Governments of all sorts and all flavours have acknowledged the importance of tourism, verbally and in writing. I will not go through all the sector deals and so on that there have been through the years. We now have, or at least anticipate, the visitor economy growth strategy from the current Government. However, I do not think—and I am not making a party political point here, because this applies to multiple Governments—that any Government in this country in my lifetime have ever given attention to this sector commensurate with its importance and potential.”
House of Commons25 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I do not know if the hon. Gentleman heard the earlier intervention by the hon. Member for Torbay (Steve Darling), who made the point—quite rightly—that we cannot look at a single tax in isolation. I will come on to discuss that point, and I will invite the hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Danny Beales) to look at the maths on what happens when we add up all the taxes together and compare the cities that he has just mentioned with cities in this country. We have lost market share, and it turns out that reaching the big target that the Government now have, to reach 50 million arrivals in the next few years, will involve—believe it or not—us losing more market share. Therefore, the great big ambition is for us to lose share of the global market for tourism. We should be much more ambitious than that.”
House of Commons25 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Will it include holiday camps, static caravans, scout camps, school trips, pilgrimages, hostels, homestays or sleeper trains? We do not know the answers to any of these questions right now.”
House of Commons25 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Government have also cut the marketing budget for VisitBritain by 41%. On top of all that, they now propose to bring in a bed tax. What is that bed tax? We do not know. It could be many things. It could be per room or per person. It could be a fixed percentage of the room rate, a fixed amount or tiered fixed amount. If it is a tiered or fixed amount, what amount? In truth, however, whatever amount is set initially is probably pretty irrelevant. Let us not forget that air passenger duty started at a rate of £5 and £10 and now ranges between £15 and well over £200. Will children be discounted or exempt? The consultation talks about giving powers to a mayor; what about places that do not have a mayor? What will the scope be? Will it include sleeping in a tent?”
House of Commons25 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The hon. Gentleman is a wise man, and he anticipates a point I will come to very shortly. Under the previous Government, candidly, there were increases to air passenger duty, rises in visa charges, the introduction of the electronic travel authorisation at a price of £10, and of course the loss of VAT-free shopping for tourists. The new Government are not just carrying on with those things, but adding cumulatively to those costs at a significantly greater rate. They are doubling the price of the ETA, which will now be £80 for a family of four. In fact, ETAs and visas are now both considerably above European price levels—considerably so, in the case of visas. On ETAs, unlike others, we do not give even a discount, let alone an exemption, for children or for people over 70.”
House of Commons25 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Mr Efford, that really was my next sentence, because there are questions about short-term lets, and about second homes in Cornwall and so on. On the short lets issue—whether rents are being pushed up is sometimes another concern with short lets—this levy is not going to solve that problem. The Government will need to do something structurally different if they want to address those short lets questions.”
House of Commons25 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Even then, we would still get the problem where hotels over quite a wide area pay it but the events, attractions, extra policing and so on all take place somewhere else. That might apply in Hartlepool, for example, as has been mentioned. It will certainly be the case in London—a hotel in Brent Cross is not going to feel the benefit of some extra things being put on in theatreland in the west end. Of course, though, the money will not be ringfenced. Even if it is nominally ringfenced in year one, do we honestly believe that in year five it will still be ringfenced? Of course it will not.”
House of Commons25 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I do agree. My right hon. Friend and I have been in multiple debates in the main Chamber talking about exactly those issues, both for tourism and for the wider hospitality sector. There are some arguments in favour of an overnight visitor levy, some of which have come up already. The main one is summed up in the sentence, “Visitor levies provide local government with a financial incentive to grow the visitor economy.” That has truth to it, and there is definitely an argument for making hospitality more hospitable through more investment in the visitor economy—in facilities, events, policing and so on. The sector needs more money going into sales and marketing if we are to realise our potential, so there might be an argument for this measure if the money were truly ringfenced—if it were only being spent on truly incremental items.”
House of Commons25 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Government say that they want economic growth, and this is a sector that can deliver it. I estimate that keeping on the path of the world growth rate for tourism rather than being below it would be worth between 0.2 and 0.3 percentage points extra in our economic growth every year. We have the capacity: it is true that some places, and certainly some individual attractions, are very busy, but it is not true for the country as a whole. Even in London, our biggest market, hotel penetration—the ratio of hotel rooms to the resident population—is still below that of Rome, Amsterdam or Madrid, for example. We score highly on cultural aspects, but low on value, which means that we are losing share to countries that take tourism very seriously and are actively trying to grow it.”
House of Commons25 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The one thing that has kept us just about competitive is not having a bed tax on top of all those other taxes. To conclude—as you will be pleased to hear, Mr Efford—the levy is a bad idea from the point of view of the cost of living; it would add over £100 to a typical holiday for a family of four. It hits a sector that has already been hammered by national insurance contributions and business rates—a sector that is absolutely vital for employment, particularly for tackling youth unemployment, that is all about small business and that is important for seaside communities. I ask the Minister, and the Government, to think of the growth opportunity and about what international tourism can do for us. It is a growing global market that is largely AI-proof and plays to our strengths.”
House of Commons25 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In fact, after—strangely—Bhutan, the UK is in the highest category for total cost when we look at all the taxes, charges and policy costs imposed on tourists. That means that although we score very highly on international comparisons of attractiveness, we score 113th out of 119 for price competitiveness for tourists. Some will say—some have said already—“All these other countries have a bed tax.” Yes, they do, but they do not have a VAT rate of 20%, which is the crucial point. Typically, VAT rates are about 10% across European countries. Amsterdam is the exception: it has just put up its VAT rate on hotels to 21%, but it seems that it is trying to reduce the number of tourists coming in, so that is not an example we want to follow.”
House of Commons25 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Government keep describing this higher multiplier as a way of ensuring that online retailers are helping to pay for lower rates bills for other businesses. To keep us within the bounds of parliamentary language, let us call that “creative framing”. According to my calculation—by the way, it is very difficult to get an answer out of the Treasury—some 91% of the businesses and buildings that are subject to that higher multiplier for business rates are not to do with online retailing. Many hotels are among them; again by my own estimation, 1,100 hotels will be paying that higher multiplier for business rates. The levy applies to everybody but, turning to the additional costs of international travel, air passenger duty is already the world’s highest departure tax. ETAs are a new cost for tourism in this country.”
House of Commons25 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I now turn to the arguments against the levy, some of which we have heard already from colleagues from multiple parties. This is a sector already dealing with big cost increases from national insurance contributions. For businesses that rely heavily on flexible labour, dealing with the Employment Rights Act 2025 is genuinely difficult—and then there are business rates, which we have not yet talked about. Yes, there has been a reprieve for pubs, but there are two things we need to know about that: first, it is only for pubs, and secondly, it is only a temporary reprieve. It does not help cafés, restaurants or many other parts of the hospitality sector; in particular, it does not help hotels. As you know, Mr Efford, there has been a change in the structure of business rates with the higher multiplier level.”
House of Commons25 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“However, if it is to happen, will the Government write into primary legislation the thing that I am sure they will say verbally to a lot of colleagues, including Labour MPs in seaside towns and parts of the country that need inward investment? I am sure they will say, “This will all be for extra stuff.” Let us see that in a piece of legislation before this Parliament. In the absence of that, I am sure that what will happen—maybe not in year one, but in year three or five—is that central Government allocations of funding to local authorities will be made on the basis that they could have implemented an overnight visitor levy. In practice, it will become impossible for a mayor in any one area to say, “I’m not going to impose that levy,” because the budget will assume it.”
House of Commons25 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I certainly do. On the issue of incrementality—I suspect other colleagues will make this point during the debate—there is only one way to guarantee that the money will truly be ringfenced and used for incremental activity, sales and marketing spend, which is to write it into primary legislation. In these debates, people often have a list of five or six questions to put to the Minister. I do not have five or six questions; my one question is whether she will write into primary legislation that the money must be ringfenced. For the avoidance of doubt, I am arguing against this levy in principle. I think we should be making it more attractive to come to this country.”
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“Just hold the Government to that. To the Minister, for whom I have the highest regard, I also say this: the only way she can guarantee that is to see it in black and white on a Bill that becomes an Act of Parliament. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered the proposed visitor levy in England.”
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“Yes, London is unique, but for people who want to come and do high-end shopping and go to cultural things, there is also Paris and Milan. I have only two asks. First, I ask the Minister to talk to colleagues and other Ministers, as she said she would, to consider the growth opportunity from this sector, and to calculate how many people would have to be deterred from visiting for the new tax to be value destructive, just in terms of the tax take from the VAT on hotel stays, food and beverages, attractions and everything else, quite apart from the overall effect on the wider economy and job creation. My second ask is to everybody else, especially Labour MPs. We will all be told repeatedly that this tax will be ringfenced, earmarked and reinvested into the visitor economy, so that it will bring more people in and create more jobs.”
House of Commons25 March 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗