The Labour’s Welsh Government’s record of being miserable, killjoy bores stands up there with the stiffest competition in the democratic world.
If it’s fun, they want to ban it, if it’s profitable, they want to tax it, and if it’s English, they’d probably like to do both at the same time.
So, it’s no surprise to regular readers of this column that they’re bringing forward a new tax. Their new tourism tax will apply to people who come to visit Wales overnight. Perversely, it will apply to Welsh people as well.
It’ll be about £1.25 per person, per night. This would add around £30 to a family holiday for four over-18s staying six nights in the land of song.
Highest council tax rates across WalesGBNWe are told, and it is true, that tourism taxes are in place elsewhere. In Venice, for instance, visitors pay a charge. But let’s be honest, we’re comparing apples and oranges.
We are competing, for the most part, with other United Kingdom destinations. It’s also worth remembering that many countries have lower VAT rates for tourism and hospitality, which improves their competitiveness against destinations in the United Kingdom.
Of course, we must be sensitive to the fact that in many coastal communities in Wales and in the UK, there often aren’t the best job opportunities, and heavy amounts of tourism can mean that massive amounts of the local housing stock get put on AirBnB.
This is a real problem, and we should not expect some people to put up with not having a real community just because once a year we like to head to their part of the world.
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Visitors to Tenby, a tourist hotpsot in Pembrokeshire, will have to pay £1.30 per night under Labour's plans, which equates to £9.10 for a week's visitGettyWe should be looking to build more homes, and helping communities to thrive. Under Labour’s bonkers plans, more people in these communities will lose their jobs.
This is a sector which employs 1 in 5 people in some parts of Wales. The tourism-related businesses the Welsh Government consulted said, loud and clear, that they did not want this tax to come forward.
That’s because they know that it will lead to job losses and it will set these communities further back, and the UK Labour Government’s recent increases to employer’s National Insurance contributions will ensure the tourism tax to break camel’s backs right across Wales.
There is a problem in our coastal communities, and if we don’t admit that, we will see venomous anti-tourism sentiments, like we have seen in Barcelona.
But equally, many of these communities rely on tourism income, and putting such a risk on a sector which employs around 1 in 10 people across all of Wales is an act of economic self harm.
The answer to this real problem is not more taxes. This is typical Labour Welsh Government: Tax the problem, and taxes will continue until the situation improves.
