Veteran tax campaigner Jacques Borel has told M&C the withdrawal of support by JD Wetherspoon spells the end for his VAT Club.
The 88-year-old, who said he had personally invested £1m in the campaign, said the chances of the Government agreeing to a VAT cut for hospitality in the short term were now “very slim”.
He blamed the failure on pubco bosses who refused to financially back the VAT Club, saying “they wanted something for nothing” and that they had “made a very bad judgement”.
The VAT Club was launched six years ago with the aim of reducing the percentage of the tax paid by hospitality businesses from 20% to 5%. It’s most prominent member was JD Wetherspoon, whose founder Tim Martin has repeatedly spoken out on the need for a VAT cut. However, the company yesterday announced it was withdrawing support from Borel’s campaign.
Following that announcement Borel told M&C: “The VAT Club is going to stop completely.
“In six years we have managed to recruit 50 members and we needed 75. In order to succeed you need expertise, time and money. We did not have enough money – it’s that simple. We put together £3m but we needed £5m.
“I found the industry was divided into three – a third who paid, a third who did not believe I would ever succeed and another third who believed in the campaign but did not want to pay for it.
“Those people have been very short sighted. They could have saved £100m by putting in £100,000. It was a minimal cost. They made a very bad judgement and for peanuts.”
On the future of the campaign for a VAT cut, Borel said he fully supported Tim Martin’s attempts to build an alliance of pubco bosses.
He said: “Tim Martin is a first class man. Unfortunately there are lots of people in that profession who are not like him. They are wrong.
“If we had an industry all like him we could have made a difference. Now I think the chances of a VAT cut in the next two years are very slim.”
On the reasons for the campaign’s failure in the UK, he said: “We succeeded in 13 countries and we succeeded because we found the expertise, the time and the money. The trouble in Britain is that we did not have the money.
“Britain is an island and islands are always different to continents. I have done business in Japan, Sicily, Corsica – islands have a different spirit.”
On his future, Borel said: “I’m 88 and the doctors say I can live another 10 years if I stop working 72 hours a week and I must admit I am tired.
“My wife and I have been married for 66 years and we believe we can live together another several years in peace.
“I’m never disappointed. We had tremendous successes in the rest of Europe but we didn’t succeed in Britain. Such is life.”
Borel in numbers
50 – Members recruited to the VAT Club
89 – MPs met face to face
67 – Meetings of the VAT Club roundtable convened
360,000km – Distance travelled on the Eurostar during the campaign (“the same as from the Earth to the Moon)
