"After consultation with Visit Britain and other interested tourism bodies, the Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport, John Penrose will today unveil a new integrated licences payment scheme as part of the new Government Tourism Strategy,
Designed to streamline current licence legislation and cut red tape the government will now collect the licence revenue in one payment for televisions, PRS and DVD Concierge Licences and redsitribute it to the bodies concerned. The new licence fee will be levied at a flat rate of 1.75% of the previous tax year's gross turnover excluding VAT for all self-catering establshments, B&Bs and hotels.
Mr Penrose commented "we believe Britain needs to be able to fight on a level playing field with the rest of Europe, so we are doing our best to remove hurdles to growth. We are also contemplating reducing the amount of VAT paid by tourism businesses"
Mr Penrose further commented that as most of the cabinet holiday in exotic foreign locations, except of course when grapsing for the odd PR opportunity. they don't really give a stuff about tourism which is why they don't have a proper minister for it, and instead lump it in with all culture media and sport.
