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Dr. Cunningham: I said that I opposed the cuts in the BTA, which are short-sighted and barmy economics, cutting off our nose to spite our face. In the long term, its budget should have been sustained, if we are to believe what the Secretary of State said at great length this morning about the Government's commitment to tourism.
We hear that the Secretary of State has had some argy-bargy with the chairman of her party, who has been bullying her into being more active in defence of the Government's policies, and we have seen the result today:
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Today, we have been given the opportunity to expose the Government's failure to do anything new on tourism in the past few years or to produce any coherent view of its future development. The industry, the Select Committee and Labour have policy ideas for the future of tourism, but the very person who should have such ideas, the Secretary of State, has none. The best that can be said of her speech today is that she seems to have taken a policy holiday on the future of tourism.
Mr. Jonathan Aitken (South Thanet):
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, in her excellent and comprehensive speech, made it clear that we are debating a success story--the story of an expanding, increasingly professional industry that is growing in terms of invisible exports, investment and employment.
We had to pinch ourselves during the speech of the right hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) to remember that the subject under debate was such a success story. I have never heard such a moaning Minnie--or whingeing pom, as the Australians say. He described in a way to make our flesh creep the terrible horrors of sweatshops and poverty pay, and he tried to make our blood curdle with tales of terrible cuts and the barmy economics of the reduction in the British Tourist Authority's budget.
One would have thought that the reduction was huge and sensational; in fact, it is from £35.5 million to£35 million, a cut of £500,000. By the standards of Chief Secretaries, that is not a significant cut but a sliver or fine shaving.
The tourism industry as a whole has gained by tens if not hundreds of millions of pounds from the national lottery, so the notion that my right hon. Friend is presiding over some cruel, Scrooge-like torturing, twisting and cutting of the British tourism industry is typical of the right hon. Member for Copeland, whose only role in tourism should be as a fairground barker for the house of horrors: roll up to see the terrible disasters that will occur if the Labour party ever gets its hands on the industry.
The statistics in my right hon. Friend's speech that struck me most were those on employment. She reminded us that 1.8 million people work in tourism, which is almost 6 per cent. of total employment in the United Kingdom, and she forecast that the industry had the potential to create another 1 million jobs over the next 10 years.
The industry is such a success story precisely because it is a deregulated industry that benefits from flexible labour laws. One way to wreck it would be to do as the right hon. Member for Copeland suggested; he seemed to imply that the social chapter would have no impact whatever, but one need only consider the pressures imposed by ingredients of the social chapter such as the
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Dr. John Cunningham:
The right hon. Gentleman will recall, as we do, that the Secretary of State for Education and Employment came back from Brussels after discussions on that directive claiming a victory. She said, in effect, "We've won." Was she telling the truth? Before the right hon. Gentleman runs away with this nonsense about the working time directive, he should note that tourism is classified in it as an industry with a number of exemptions: it is exempt from articles 3, 4, 5, 8 and 16. He must do a little better if he wants to convince anyone that he understands what he is talking about.
Mr. Aitken:
It is not a matter of dispute that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Employment got a better deal than expected on the working time directive, but it is still a bad deal for Britain overall. The only common ground that I have with the right hon. Gentleman is that I thank goodness that my right hon. Friend managed, among other things, to negotiate some derogations and exemptions.
One of the problems with Brussels is, when is an exemption an exemption? Often it is not one. The right hon. Gentleman's complacency may be misplaced, and I think that the figure of £100 million for the cost to the tourism industry of the working time directive is about right.
The essence of the tourism industry is that, geographically speaking, one could describe it as an archipelago of classical small businesses, particularly in the hotel trade. Last week, I attended, as I do nearly every year, the annual dinner of the hoteliers of my constituency. There are 535 hotels in Thanet, which employ, directly or indirectly, some 1,500 people. That constituency figure reminds us how well spread is the tourism industry. It is important not only from a London point of view, as has rightly been emphasised, but constituency by constituency.
The hoteliers in my constituency, to whom I often talk, would not recognise the resonant, flesh-creeping phrases of the right hon. Member for Copeland about sweatshop attitudes and poverty pay. The industry is full of optimism, gaining more business than ever before and, in Thanet, creating some good niches such as language schools, which bring in more than £10 million to Thanet, creating some 500 jobs. Seeing you in the Chair,Mr. Deputy Speaker, I am reminded of the great golf courses in east Kent, which are patronised by you and others. Niche businesses are creating more and more jobs in hotels.
If I had a slight niggle about my right hon. Friend's speech it was that it was London-focused. From her point of view that may be correct, because London is a great magnet for tourism, but she mentioned Heathrow's importance as the gateway to Britain. I agree about that, but there is another gateway: the channel ports. They are much in the news at present but, I am sorry to say, for
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A few months ago, there was much boastful talk, not a million miles from Eurotunnel, about how it would win the price war against the ferries, put its rivals out of business and dominate the cross-channel traffic market. Perhaps that was a case of pride coming before a fire. The regrettable closure of the channel tunnel reminds us that we need competition in the cross-channel marketplace and flourishing ferry companies, just as we need a safe and successful Eurotunnel.
In the cross-channel market, and in the tourism market as a whole, tourism and the travelling public win if competition thrives, but it must be fair competition. I have a special plea for the Government. Let there be equal rights for all channel ports. Fair play must be the order of the day in matters such as signposting, tourism promotion and, above all, communications links. The Government should create for the channel ports, and for elsewhere, a truly level tourism playing field. I must highlight a manifest inequality in the treatment of Ramsgate, which for road links is the Cinderella of channel ports, especially in relation to her two sisters, Dover and Folkestone. I do not intend to imply that they are the ugly sisters--they are attractive towns--but they are far better provided with road links.
The channel tunnel terminal at Cheriton near Folkestone has its spanking new M20 motorway. It cost tens of millions of pounds to bring it up to the terminal entrance. Dover has the M2 and its Jubilee way leading right into the port. Ramsgate alone lacks any sort of port access to link Britain's second biggest channel port to the dual carriageway system of Kent and Britain's motorway network. I know that my right hon. Friend is not the Secretary of State for Transport, so I shall not burden her by rehearsing all the arguments for the Ramsgate harbour approach road, even though the environmental, economic and transportation case is overwhelming, but I would like her to do two things in her capacity as the Minister responsible for tourism.
First, I would like my right hon. Friend to reflect on the unfairness point: that every other channel part in Kent--and for that matter in France and Belgium--has, or is planned to have, its own major port access road, paid for out of the public purse, to separate the port traffic from the congested traffic of the adjoining town. Ramsgate alone is discriminated against. It is Britain's second largest channel port, with 3.5 million passengers, more than 450,000 cars and 250,000 lorries every year; it is in the middle of an expansion programme involving two new fast ferries or catamarans that are expected to attract an additional 1.5 million passengers, 300,000 cars and 140,000 lorries next year; port Ramsgate and the Holyman-Sally ferry company are obviously good for tourism and for Britain and are intending to grow and flourish with the new investment in the tourism infrastructure. Despite all those factors, Ramsgate is the only channel port without a port access road. To leave it in that isolated position is to introduce an element of unfair competition in favour of other ports.
When my right hon. Friend has reflected on the unfairness point, will she take a message from the debate to the Secretary of State for Transport and his road
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That brings me to a theme that I might call my one niggle or nagging doubt about the Department's role in tourism. The House knows after her excellent speech that my right hon. Friend is serious about tourism, but are the rest of Whitehall and the Government equally serious and committed? It is good news that we at long last have a Cabinet Minister, and an energetic and vocal one, responsible for tourism, but how well does her Department co-ordinate with others? When she and others talk about the need to attract high-spending tourists from overseas, especially from the far east and America, I wonder how well co-ordinated that enthusiasm is, given the squalid treatment that they are given at Heathrow, with its huge visa queues of people coming from America and other countries. They are subjected to unjustifiable delays because of the immigration service, which is the responsibility of the Home Office.
In asking how good co-ordination is, I shall let the House into a little official secret. I happen to know that an important Whitehall committee was once set up. It was called the ministerial co-ordinating committee on tourism. I tried to find out how often it has met, and discovered that it has not met since 1991. The five-year gap in its schedule suggests that the Government's approach to tourism is not quite as well orchestrated as it perhaps should be. My right hon. Friend may have a perfectly good answer. Without the help of a co-ordinating committee, she is setting a faster pace and getting more effective results than any previous Minister for tourism. She has a good precedent for that. Perhaps I may refer to an ancestor or relative of mine. When the late Lord Beaverbrook became Minister for Aircraft Production in 1940, he abolished all co-ordinating committees with the memorable dictum:
"Committees take the punch out of war."
Perhaps they take the punch out of tourism, too. I do not wish to be too critical, but I believe that there is a need for greater co-operation between Departments, as with the competitiveness White Paper.
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