Meeting of the Parliament 24 March 2026 [Draft]
The Scottish Conservatives very much welcome the Visitor Levy (Amendment) (Scotland) Bill, which corrects errors and misjudgments arising from the Visitor Levy (Scotland) Act 2024 that the Parliament passed back in 2024. I thank the minister for his constructive engagement with me and other colleagues on the content of the bill and for all the work that he and civil servants did to get it through so quickly. That just shows what can be done. If the minister is back as a minister after the election, who knows what other matters might be dealt with very quickly if the political will to do so is there?
Although Scottish Conservatives welcome the changes in the bill, there are other changes that we believe could have been made to improve the legislation in this area, which we discussed when we were looking at amendments last week. I am sure that we will want to return to those in the future.
Let us put all that in a bit of context, because the visitor levy continues to be controversial. We have made the point on numerous occasions in the chamber that Scotland is already seen as a high-cost tourist destination. We have VAT on hospitality at 20 per cent, which is the second-highest rate in Europe. If we add a visitor levy on top of that, at anything between 5 per cent and 10 per cent, we push up costs even more. Many Scottish families already find it cheaper to fly overseas for a holiday rather than take a break here, and overseas visitors will be balancing the cost of visiting Scotland in comparison with that of visiting other European destinations. We need to be careful that we do not price ourselves out of the market.
I know that people will argue that in Edinburgh, during the festival, the place is buzzing and it can easily sustain a visitor levy, because demand outstrips supply. However, Edinburgh is not all of Scotland, and many parts of Scotland would love to have even a fraction of the visitors that Edinburgh has.