Osborne should swallow his pride and cut VAT

In The Herald today, Lady Claire Macdonald, Skye hotelier and doyenne of British food writers, calls for an immediate halving of VAT to 10% in the hospitality industry.

"This is the most urgent issue surrounding hospitality today in the Highlands, where tourism is the lifeblood of the economy," she says.

A call to reduce VAT on hospitality to 5% is currently the subject of an e-petition to the UK Government. In the EU, 21 countries have a lower VAT rate for the hotel sector (and 13 for the entire hospitality sector) than the UK. It is claimed that in France, where the rate was cut from nearly 20% to 5%, around 22,000 jobs were created in the first year alone.

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