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Finance Bill

I am not trying to dodge that question, and I understand that it is a very sensitive issue in specific geographical areas of Scotland. Many contributions today have referred to the impact on consumers, but we do not necessarily know what that will be, because retailers construct their prices using many factors, not only the VAT rate. How they set their prices has as much to do with fraud at the till, marketing and advertising, for instance. Although there was a VAT reduction two years ago, when we did our Christmas shopping at that time many of us did not notice that it had gone down from 17.5% to 15%, because shopkeepers kept their prices the same, as they were already discounting in order to counter the recession and attract sales. Therefore, it does not necessarily follow that a VAT rise will be automatically passed on to consumers.