When the VAT cut is too difficult for the government to implement

You might have already read about the 10 Downing Street gift shop failing to pass on the VAT cut: Now it emerges that the Cabinet War Rooms are having similar problems…

from a PQ: 

Mr. (Francis) Maude: To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport whether the entry fees for the Cabinet War Rooms have been reduced to reflect the reduction in VAT to 15 per cent. [244785]

Barbara Follett: The Imperial War Museum has advised that the reduction in VAT to 15 per cent. has not been applied to admission prices for its branches that charge an entry fee: the Churchill Museum/Cabinet War Rooms; HMS Belfast; and Imperial War Museum Duxford. To apply the reduction would incur costs in re-printing publicity material and revising contracts with third-party ticket partners. Wherever possible, prices will be held at December 2008 levels and planned rises postponed. Where prices are increasing, these will be modest and in line with other market forces.

The Imperial War Museum has passed on the VAT reduction at shops in its branches and online…

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Jim Pickard joined the lobby team in January 2008. He has been at the Financial Times since 1999 as a regional correspondent, assistant UK news editor and property correspondent.

Kiran Stacey is an FT political correspondent, having joined the lobby in 2011. He started at the FT as a graduate trainee in 2008, working on desks including UK companies and US equity markets before taking over the FT's Energy Source blog.

Contributors

Elizabeth Rigby, the FT's chief political correspondent, joined the lobby team in September 2010. Elizabeth has worked at the FT for more than a decade and was most recently its consumer industries editor.

Helen Warrell is the FT's UK reporter, covering home affairs, crime and policing. She joined the FT in 2008 and has spent time as a reporter in the Brussels bureau and more recently, editing the paper's Asia coverage on the world news desk.

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