Tourism: Overnight Visitor Levy

Debate between Greg Smith and Jim McMahon

Tuesday 15th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Jim McMahon]

My hon. Friend raises a fair point, and one that I will take away.

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

I am sure that many of my constituents considering a UK break will look to Cambridgeshire, where the always fiscally sound Conservative mayor Paul Bristow has made it clear that now is not the time for such a tax. However, hospitality businesses across the rest of the country will be frightened by this measure—we already have two pubs closing a day, and businesses are struggling to get by under this Government’s tax burden. How low does tourism in this country have to dip, or how many businesses have to go bust, before the Treasury tells this Minister that this tourist levy must go?

[Jim McMahon]

In the spirit of devolution, if a mayor believes that not introducing a visitor levy is the right decision for their area, the Government will support that. To be clear, though, the last Conservative Government was not a good period for our pubs and hospitality businesses—pubs in our communities, town centres and city centres closed at a rate of knots. We are trying to say that that decline is not inevitable, and that Government working in partnership with our regions and councils can begin to turn that around.

Provisional Local Government Finance Settlement

Debate between Greg Smith and Jim McMahon

Wednesday 18th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jim McMahon]

That is the point: the previous Government knew just how bad the situation was, but they put off the tough decisions. For example, how many times in 14 years did the previous Government promise that they would go back to multi-year settlements so that councils knew where they were, but failed to do so? How many times did the previous Government say that they would bring in a fair funding review, but failed to do so? How many times did the previous Government say that they would deal with the audit backlog? They did not just fail to do that; the backlog got worse. If we had not taken action, it would have been 1,000 sets of audited accounts, and that was not due to covid, because those accounts went back to 2015. That failure was systemic, and it was all on the watch on the previous Government. What that meant in practice was £100 billion of public money that they could not account for, so they did not really know the state of the sector, because they completely gave up on monitoring it.

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

Following on from the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Joy Morrissey) and the Minister’s answer, can I assure him that there are areas of deprivation in rural communities such as Buckinghamshire? Further to the point made by the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds), while the devil is in the detail, it already looks from the figures like Buckinghamshire will take a multimillion-pound hit from the loss of various grants. Can the Minister give an assurance that rural communities will be treated equally to urban ones, and will not be left behind?

[Jim McMahon]

Either the hon. Gentleman does not know the status of the rural services delivery grant, or he is trying to mislead the House. A large share of large rural authorities should have got the rural services delivery grant but did not, because that grant was not about rural services. When the previous Prime Minister stood up in Tunbridge Wells and said that the Government had taken money from deprived communities and moved it across, he did not mean that it was for all communities; it was for party politics. So where were Conservative Members then when it came to those rural communities that did not get the grant? I did not hear anybody standing up and asking for their rural community to get the money for those services that Conservative Members are now trying to champion. We will absolutely make sure that deprivation and need are part of the funding reforms that are coming, but we will also make sure that we genuinely take into account the cost of delivering services in rural areas. The sector needs a fair funding review, and we are determined to deliver one.