42 C O N T E X T 1 2 4 : M A Y 2 0 1 2 Director’s cut Absurdities of VAT It is worth considering the extent to which the Chancellor’s proposed changes to VAT relief for key listed building works are ostensibly pitched at addressing anomalies, but in fact rely almost exclusively on the absurdities that only a Kafkaesque bureaucracy could generate. It is unfortunate that these initiatives are able to build so much on recent work on heritage policy in England. I saw the film of the Kazuo Ishiguro novel Never Let Me Go recently. It sparked lively debate in our household. For me, the film – I have not yet read the book – brought starkly into relief the double standards in government’s discourse around the withdrawal of VAT relief for key heritage works. Ishiguro’s story follows the model of contemporary science fiction that both Japanese and British do so well, so as an Anglicised Japanese Ishiguro is especially well placed to capture the mood and the intellectual challenges that underpin the best of that school. It may be only by chance that it also characterises failings that are all too familiar to anyone engaging with government. Ishiguro’s story looks at the life of three children. As they grow up and learn to experience all the emotions and feelings of other people, they discover that that they are being cared for only as hosts of their major organs that must be ‘donated’ in the future. Their limited but unchallenging lives represent only a sophisticated version of farming: plein air rather than battery, so to speak. The primary challenge posed is that, while we may happily donate blood, and many are comfortable with organ donations, and even growing cells in test tubes is increasingly normal, one logical conclusion is that we might grow entire people so that we can harvest their body parts for others ‘in need’. The film, co-produced by Ishiguro, sets aside substantial irrationalities that might highlight absurdities within the story so that the narrative can be pursued. For example, the characters blithely accept their fate without running away; the four or so ‘donations’ of organs that each individual makes could never justify the costs of farmed ‘production’; society would not allow the farmed to live alongside the ordinary (even the holocaust recognised the centrality of separation through the camps); and the concerns over the farming process among more sympathetic intellectuals are not likely to be ameliorated by a test for a ‘soul’ in the farmed, based on the production of something as indefinable as ‘art’. Once tied to the narrative, however, any reality that might undermine the characters’ stories must be set aside.We have here an excellent example of logic progression: from donating blood to farming entire people – the reductio ad absurdum. While the narrative moves beyond the absurd through the humanity of its subjects, the same can not be said of the government’s no less absurd case for withdrawing VAT relief on key heritage work because of reputed ‘anomalies’ in the system. Like Ishiguro, the absurdity must be ignored so that the narrative can hold progress. Unlike him, that conflict is not resolved by exploring the potential. In its consultation, HMRC argues that although ‘approved alterations to a “protected building” are zero-rated… the majority of the work covered by the relief consists of extension work which is not necessary for heritage purposes’. So ‘current rules… give a perverse incentive for change as opposed to repair’. The first problem is the HMRC’s assertion that the majority of the ‘extension work’ is somehow ‘not necessary for heritage’. It is a perverse logic – not even substantiated – in a world where more than ever the thrust of sustaining our built heritage is about adapting it to modern use. HMRC itself recognises that ‘some alterations restore or enhance… or prolong… active life’. Indeed in the coalition’s own changefocused National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), the overarching imperative is to put historic buildings to ‘viable uses consistent with their conservation’. This thread of logic is not what HMRC wants, so it ignores it. Following the recent long road of heritage policy development in England,
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