Meeting of the Parliament 19 February 2026 [Draft]
I accept that that may be the case, but I think that it would be far better, from the point of view of clarity, if we had a scheme that made it very clear who was eligible to pay and who was not, rather than leaving it up to individual local authorities to make those choices.
Councils across Scotland are currently seeing the visitor levy as a source of additional revenue, which is not surprising when their budgets are being cut by the SNP Government. The levy represents an additional cost for a sector that is already suffering as a result of Labour’s national insurance increase, which is a tax on jobs, the additional cost of short-term let licensing for self-catering providers, rising energy costs and flat demand from customers. In addition, the sector as a whole faces staggering increases in non-domestic rates as a result of the current revaluation.
It makes no sense to add a visitor levy for a sector that is already struggling with all those other costs. Scotland is already seen as an expensive destination, compared with other parts of Europe or other parts of the world, and the visitor levy will make matters worse. The Government is at risk of killing the goose that lays the golden egg, given the importance of tourism to the Scottish economy.
As things stand, some councils are pushing ahead with introducing a visitor levy without even doing a proper economic assessment. In my region, when Perth and Kinross Council ran a consultation, it found that there was overwhelming local opposition to a visitor levy across all sectors, yet, shockingly, the SNP administration, propped up by the Liberal Democrats, is still pressing on. In Stirling, the SNP is committed to bringing in a visitor levy at 3 per cent from next year.
Although we support the bill today, we remain deeply concerned about the impact of a visitor levy on a sector that desperately needs more help from the Government before more jobs are lost and more businesses fold.
I observe, in closing, that what we have seen from the Government is a remarkably cack-handed way of making law. It is only three years since the Government passed a bill on the matter, and here we are back again trying to fix the mess that was made. The Government really should have properly thought through the implications of the legislation before it brought it in. I hope that the lesson has been learned from that. The bill tries to fix that mess, so we will support it.