â??Tax breaks had to goâ?? â?? Cameron

For David Cameron and the Coalition Government, the decision to axe game tax breaks won’t go away.

The Prime Minister today again faced the question of why he, and his government, chose to go back on promises made in the run up to the election.

It remained one that the Conservatives have struggled to answer with any substance.

“Before the election all three parties pledged to introduce a videogames tax relief to compete internationally on a level playing-field,” Luciana Berger, a young Labour MP for Liverpool Wavertree, said today to the Prime Minister in a Commons session.

“Why has the government reneged on that promise?” she asked.

Cameron, who was quizzed on the issue at a PMQ session in July, once again kept close the Treasury lines.

”Well we had to make difficult decisions on tax relief,” he responded, to the routine grumbles of Labour MPs.

“Well, the Opposition members groan,” he retorted, “can we think of one thing they’re actually going to support to get the deficit down? I can’t think of a single thing.”

“So we have got to take difficult decisions and I think that tax break relief, which was not particularly successful or targeted, had to go. Those are the difficult decisions we have to take.”

Before the election there were rumours that George Osborne, then the Shadow Chancellor, had pulled the plug on tax breaks after no promise was made in the Conservatives’ pre-election Manifesto.

A Develop report backing the claims was vehemently refuted by Culture Minister Ed Vaizey, who promised his party would introduce tax breaks “no ifs, no buts.”