Tax-Free Shopping: Economic Impact
Baroness Meyer Excerpts(5 days ago)
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Baroness Meyer
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of tax-free shopping on the economy.
The Parliamentary Secretary, HM Treasury (Lord Pitt-Watson) (Lab)
My Lords, the VAT retail export scheme known as tax-free shopping was withdrawn in 2021. The announcement of that withdrawal was made by Kemi Badenoch. The OBR estimated that the 2021 withdrawal, which was from non-EU citizens, would save the taxpayer £540 million. However, a policy that was compliant with World Trade Organization rules would apply to EU citizens as well and be much more expensive. It therefore seems extraordinary that Mrs Badenoch has confirmed that she would reintroduce this policy but has not told us how it would be funded. Should any Member of the party opposite know the answer to that question, I would be most interested.
Baroness Meyer (Con)
I thank the Minister for his Answer. I should note that it was actually Rishi Sunak who scrapped the scheme. The OBR estimate of £500 million a year is not agreed by many of the organisations and businesses that would benefit from it. Will the Minister review the evidence, since many do not agree with the numbers, and consider a digital retail export scheme modelled on Germany and Italy, in which private operators refund and thus reduce administration costs to the Government? That was one reason why the scheme was scrapped, because the Government estimated that it was too expensive bureaucratically. Before the noble Lord, Lord Watts, says anything—yes, it was the Conservative Party that scrapped the scheme, but, on the other hand, I think to myself, “Isn’t this an irresistible opportunity for the Labour Government to reverse something to create jobs and growth in this country?”
Lord Pitt-Watson (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Meyer. In fact, the Conservative Party did reintroduce this scheme in the Liz Truss mini-Budget. It was withdrawn six weeks later by Jeremy Hunt when he became Chancellor and, when he withdrew it, he suggested that that would save the taxpayer £2 billion per year. Again, I ask if anyone on the Benches opposite can tell me where that £2 billion would come from? As to the evidence that this would be tax raising, there are some reports—I accept that point from the noble Baroness—but the Oxford Economics report was, of course, commissioned by the Association of International Retail and the Centre for Economics and Business research by Global Blue, which is a company that provides VAT refund services. If we are going to have evidence-based policy, I think the numbers that I have been citing to your Lordships are rather better than ones that might be in danger of being policy-based evidence.
Defence Funding
Baroness Meyer Excerpts(1 month, 2 weeks ago)
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Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, it is the turn of the Cross Benches.
United Kingdom: Business Competitiveness
Baroness Meyer Excerpts(1 month, 4 weeks ago)
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Baroness Meyer
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the cumulative impact of tax measures introduced since July 2024 on the competitiveness of the United Kingdom as a place to do business.
The Parliamentary Secretary, HM Treasury (Lord Pitt-Watson) (Lab)
My Lords, it is an honour to be answering this Question from the Dispatch Box. British business is competitive. It creates jobs, it produces the goods and services on which we depend, and it pays tax that funds public services. Those services in turn support business, and paying for them fully generates fiscal stability. Those services and that discipline in turn underpin business competitiveness. It seems to me that, through the system, we should be thanking businesses for the huge burden they bear and for the amount they generate for our economy and society.
Baroness Meyer (Con)
My Lords, I welcome the Minister to his new position. I thank him for his Answer, but I am a little surprised by his optimism. Since the changes to capital gains tax and higher employment costs, 6,000 business owners and company directors have left the country, some 13,000 stores and 700 pubs have closed, and 7,000 hotels, restaurants and cafés have entered insolvency. The warnings are coming from everywhere: the Institute of Directors, the CBI, the IEA, the British Retail Consortium, the hospitality sector and major retailers all point to the burden of higher taxes. We cannot tax our way to growth. Does the Minister not agree that to get growth, we need more entrepreneurs and risk-takers, not policies that drive them abroad?
Lord Pitt-Watson (Lab)
I absolutely do think that we should be backing business. I hope there is some assurance in the first speech that the Chancellor of the Exchequer made when he said that he was just as concerned about the cost of doing business as he was about the cost of living. This Government have done lots of things to generate competitiveness. One is fiscal credibility. Another is the trade deals. A third would be the industrial policy. Perhaps we are beginning to see in the things that businesspeople are saying that although there is some bad news—there is always some bad news—there is also good news. For example, earlier this year 46% of members of the British Chambers of Commerce expected to grow this year, relative to 35% last year. I could quote many business organisations and individuals who are essentially saying that Britain is on the up and a great place to invest.
Autumn Budget 2025
Baroness Meyer Excerpts(10 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Baroness Meyer (Con)
My right honourable friend Kemi Badenoch hit the nail on the head when she described this Budget as one “sold on a lie”. It is a house of cards built on misleading claims about the public finances to justify sweeping tax rises. This is not responsible management; it is politics dressed up as economics.
This Budget does not simply mislead; it takes the country down a dangerous path, drifting towards the very collectivist policies that history warns us against. I say this not only as someone with a background in economics but as someone who, once a fluent Russian speaker, travelled to the Soviet Union many times from 1965. I saw what happens when a Government pursue centralised control, forced redistribution, the stripping away of private property rights and the erosion of individual incentive. It produced stagnation, corruption, loss of freedom, and eventually culminated in the collapse of the Soviet Union. Innovation withered because there was no reward for effort. Bureaucracy flourished because it was the only route to advancement.
While communist elites shopped in secret underground luxury stores filled with western goods, ordinary citizens queued for hours for basic goods. As the old Soviet joke put it, “We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us”. With this Budget, no one will even need to pretend to work.
People aspire to wealth for security and a better future for their children. Why else do they buy lottery tickets? It is because they dream of being rich, yet the Government fuel resentment toward the rich—the very people who invest, create jobs and contribute most to HMRC’s revenue. Punishing aspiration has never produced growth; it simply drives ambition and talent away. As has been said before, more than 250,000 people have already left the country, with many more following. Companies are relocating operations overseas. Meanwhile, public spending, borrowing and unemployment are up, productivity is flat, investment and construction are falling and growth forecasts are anaemic.
Milton Friedman put it with typical clarity:
“Nobody spends somebody else’s money as carefully as he spends his own”.
Yet the Government demand ever more of the public’s money while showing ever less discipline in how they use it. This is not stability, competence, fairness or compassion, and it is certainly not a responsible plan for growth. It contradicts the Government’s own manifesto and ignores the most basic principle of economic growth. It expands the state while shrinking the economy. How can the Government look our citizens in the eye and explain that families on full benefits will receive £18,000 more a year than some working families? I do not mean rich people; I mean hard-working families. The Budget will make families poorer, businesses less competitive and our economy weaker. These policies expose inexperience and an overconfident Administration, guided not by economic reality but by rigid ideology. I ask the Minister, have this Government learned anything from history?
Economic and Taxation Policies: Jobs, Growth and Prosperity
Baroness Meyer Excerpts(11 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Baroness Meyer (Con)
My Lords, being 30th in the list is a problem, as I am bound to repeat what many noble Lords sitting on my Benches have said. But sometimes things need to be repeated time and time again for them to sink in, and this is particularly so when you are facing an audience that does not want to hear the chorus of voices expressing their concern.
I am not talking just to people sitting on my Benches but to allies and friends of the Labour Party. Take Sir Tony Blair, who has warned that the workers’ rights Bill will erode business confidence and ultimately undermine growth. Labour backer John Caudwell recently said that it will make Britain “less investable”. Sir Martin Sorrell and an array of major business leaders, SMEs, entrepreneurs and start-ups all echoed this view and urged the Government to reconsider.
The Government speak of delivering growth, but the facts are there. After only one year, growth has fallen to nearly 0%, the budget deficit is up, public debt is the second highest on record, unemployment is up, productivity is down and inflation is up. What is the Government’s answer? It is more taxes. No wonder confidence has collapsed. Apart from trade unions and their supporters, no one seems to support the workers’ rights Bill. Why? Anyone who understands economics realises that, once you tax jobs, you end up with fewer jobs. If you tax success, you kill aspiration. Tax wealth and the wealth leaves. We should reward entrepreneurs and encourage them to invest, not punish them and drive them into the welcoming arms of Italy and the Middle East.
Non-doms are not freeloaders; they have paid billions in taxes, invested in British businesses, created jobs and supported philanthropy—yet they are being driven away. Redistribution of wealth may sound very virtuous, but it is ideology, not economics. The Laffer curve is not a theory but a warning; beyond a certain point, higher taxes reduce revenue because people simply stop working and investing or they move elsewhere. We are there—Labour is draining the lifeblood of our economy, taking more from a shrinking number of taxpayers to fund an ever-growing number of dependants. This is not fairness but folly. You cannot redistribute prosperity if you are destroying it in the first place.
Will the Minister consider a flat tax model on the Italian system, as laid out so clearly by the noble Lord, Lord Elliott, to attract investment and drive growth? Does the Minister accept that constant tax rises are driving away the very entrepreneurs and investors on whom the economy grows? I conclude by congratulating the noble Lord on tabling this important debate and giving us an excellent opening speech. I am surprised to see how few on the opposite Benches are speaking—maybe because they cannot actually defend their policy.