Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:20 pm on 25 October 2017.
Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I’d like to thank those Members who took part in this debate this afternoon. In opening, my colleague Nick Ramsay comprehensively outlined why this ill-conceived proposal would be inappropriate for Wales, and, of course, the tourism industry would be significantly affected, as we’ve heard in contributions today from Members on this side of the Chamber. Now, as he and other colleagues—Angela Burns, Mohammad Asghar and Suzy Davies—have rightly said during the course of this debate, the introduction of a tourism tax would compromise the progress that has been made to boost Wales’s visitor economy and it will undermine business investment and employment opportunities in the tourism sector and put Wales at a disadvantage to other locations within the UK. There’s no doubt about that.
I have to say, Caroline Jones made a very fair contribution, pointing out, of course, that this tax was not in the Labour Party’s manifesto ahead of last year’s elections. Now, we can all agree on one thing this afternoon here: we can agree that the tourism sector does make a huge contribution to the Welsh economy. Figures from the Great Britain tourism survey demonstrate the great work that’s being undertook by the tourism sector in Wales with both visitor numbers and visitor spend showing significant improvement—something that we need to build upon and not jeopardise.
Now I come to Joyce Watson’s contribution. Of course, Joyce Watson says, ‘Nothing has been decided yet.’