Prime Minister probed again on the controversial tax break u-turn
On the third time David Cameron was quizzed on the decision to scrap tax breaks, an answer came.
Yesterday at Prime Minister’s Questions he was asked – for the third time in the Commons since the summer – why the Coalition Government scrapped game tax breaks.
Jim McGovern, a Labour MP for Dundee West, repeated the question on the back of new revelations that some government officials didn’t feel tax breaks for games were ‘poorly targeted’ – a conflict with the Treasury’s line on the matter.
“The Prime Minister said tax breaks for the computer games industry were poorly targeted,” said McGovern, whose constituency was the home to fallen studio Realtime Worlds.
“This seems to be in contradiction to the conversations I’ve had with his ministers, who say his government policy is to not give any tax breaks on any industry in the future.”
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Cameron’s response, this time, brought more back than before.
“The steps that we took in the budget were to look at the tax system and try and simplify the corporation tax regime and bring about one of the lowest rates of corporation tax in the developed world,” he said.
“That’s what we’ve done, we’re cutting corporation tax this year, the next year, the year after to bring it down to 24 per cent.
“That’s what we’re doing, and we’re paying for that by removing a number of allowances.
“The reform will make Britain, including Scotland, one of the best places in the world to do business.”
Before the General Election rumours spread that George Osborne, then the Shadow Chancellor, had pulled the plug on tax breaks as no mention was made in the Conservatives’ pre-election Manifesto.
A Develop report that backed the claims was vehemently denied by Culture Minister Ed Vaizey, who promised his party would introduce tax breaks “no ifs, no buts.”
The chance of this government giving tax breaks to an industry full of common oiks is about is slightly less than them building a Moonbase to combat UFO incursions.
Maybe they're waiting for how it all falls into place in the California vote. Nothing more scarier the Arnie buting down the door of No. 10 , M60 in hand yelling 'Hasta La Vista Cameron'. But i digress. Proberly more than likley its just another cost saving plan put together to save money. Also to lump that on top with the Student Tuition fee's, its going to make it a lot harder for for AAA title studio's to setup shop. It's just going to promote a more Indy-studio friendly nation. Yay for Bedroom developers!
It is amusing that they still us a one sided abacus when they do all their accounting and decision making; the word deficit gets used repeatedly, yet there is rarely a mention of the major valuable bank asset we now own (& bought at a knock down price).
The word deficit could be replaced with the word loans and business mortgage, which wouldn't sound so evocative trying to avoid supporting an important UK industry.
They don't seem to realise that if you let the economy contract too much you end up being the worlds economic whipping boy as you fall further down the economic ladder.
But I guess to get a fresh way of thinking in government, we'd need West Minister to be awash with MPs holding Science, Maths, Engineering and computing degrees. Ironically the same qualified people the games industry in the UK is crying out for.
Instead, we have a PM who was affluent enough to study Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford, and a deputy PM who studied Social Anthropology at Cambridge University, which nicely illustrates why neither of them understand or are any help to the UK games industry.
