Finance (No.2) Bill

They are the spiritual home of so many things, as I am sure that the Opposition Whip would agree. I have spoken on many occasions to leading lights in the video games industry, and they outlined many of the concerns that have been expressed by the hon. Members for Dundee West (Jim McGovern), for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie) and for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson). There is a risk that a significant amount of business is leaving these shores because of a perception, and indeed the reality, that there is unfair tax and regulatory competition from further afield. One of my concerns, which I expressed before the election to leading lights in the video games industry, is that trying to emulate the film tax credit is not necessarily the right route down which to go. Back-Bench and Front-Bench veterans of Finance Bills going back a decade or more—you are one, Madam Deputy Speaker, from your time as a Minister, as am I from my time in opposition—will know of the concern that the film tax credit has had to be updated almost annually, because of the clear abuses and unintended consequences resulting from it. There was a sense that although the film business in this country benefited from it, there was a significant through-flow of cash that was not in the interests of either the Exchequer or the high-quality products of which our film industry has been rightly proud in decades gone by.