HC Deb 19 November 1991 vol 199 cc141-2W
Mr. Frank Field

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is his estimate of the revenue lost in granting duty-free status facilities for people travelling to and from the United Kingdom.

Mr. Adley

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what he calculates will be the loss of revenue to the Treasury of the proposals to extend for a further 15 years the duty-free concession currently available at United Kingdom ports and airports.

Mrs. Gillian Shephard

[holding answers 7 and 8 November 1991]: It is very difficult to provide an estimate because there is no information available on the amount of expenditure on duty-free goods purchased abroad by travellers entering the United Kingdom.

A certain amount of rather dated information is available from independent surveys by the Economist Intelligence Unit and the Netherlands Economic Institute on purchases of duty-free goods by travellers leaving the United Kingdom. Using that data, it is estimated very roughly that the loss of revenue to the United Kingdom from duty-free purchases by travellers entering the United Kingdom from the EC may be between £25 million and £50 million a year.