Schedule 18 - Relief for community amateur sports clubs
Finance Bill
10:30 am
Mr John Pugh (Southport, Liberal Democrat)
During the recess, I occupied myself usefully with this amendment by consulting the local sports council in Sefton, which is, as you know, Mr. Benton, a reputable and sound body. I gave it the good news about the tax incentives and benefits, but its response was a little muted because the world of large donations and trading incomes of £15,000 plus seems a little foreign to it. Its main interest each year is to get by without being in debt and its main financial preoccupation is meeting the rates bill. The registration scheme poses a dilemma: if it follows the route of charities, mandatory rates relief will be 80 per cent., but if it goes for registration, there will be no such benefit and discretionary rates relief from the local authority could be adversely affected. There was not enormous delight because the benefits were thought to be rather modest.
One matter of concern, which is the thrust of the amendment, is that the Treasury has reserved to itself the right to define what is an eligible sport. There is an uncontentious mechanism to get around that and to get the Treasury off the hook. For all its expertise, the Treasury is not good at defining sports because it is not an area in which it has a substantial body of knowledge. I should have thought that eligible sports could be as well defined by Sport England as by anyone else and certainly better than the Treasury, unless the object of the Treasury in defining eligible sports is to control the rate of tax relief.
Will the Treasury evaluate whether the adjustment is successful in encouraging sports clubs? If there is no evaluation, there is a danger that what the measure
achieves might be cosmetic. I do not think that that is the Treasury's intention and it should explain how it will evaluate the success of the measure.