Examination of Witnesses(Questions 143-159)
RT HON
TESSA JOWELL,
DR KIM
HOWELLS, MR
BRIAN LEONARD
AND MR
SIMON BROADLEY
TUESDAY 19 NOVEMBER 2002
Chairman
143. Secretary of State, Minister, we would
like to welcome you and your officials here today. We are very
pleased to see you.
(Tessa Jowell) Chairman, thank you very
much indeed. We are very pleased to be here. If I can just introduce
my two official colleagues, they are Brian Leonard and Simon Broadley,
who are the senior officials in my Department responsible for
tourism policy. Let me just perhaps for two or three minutes give
you an introductory statement, if you would like that. Otherwise,
I am happy to go straight into questions.
144. I do not want to be rude, but if you can
keep it brief, that would be appreciated.
(Tessa Jowell) Fine. We are completely restructuring
the public sector support for the tourism industry and I think
it is important to be clear that what we are proposing is not
simply a merger of the two existing bodies, the English Tourism
Council and the British Tourist Authority, but a new approach
to look at what we hope will become a public-private partnership.
We will restore the marketing function within the new single organisation,
the marketing of England, and we will obviously work in close
collaboration both with the Welsh and the Scottish bodies in full
regard to the devolution arrangements, but we also believe that,
with proper co-operation and consultation, there is also scope
for growing, through the new arrangements, the UK market. Our
reform agenda for tourism has been very much driven by the four
conclusions that emanated from a major conference with the industry
about a year ago, focusing on the need for marketing capacity
for England, improving the level of skill and, therefore, the
quality of the very disparate tourism sector, the importance of
a single voice for tourism and the importance of much better data
collection and interpretation of the economic data to support
the interpretation of trends in relation to the industry. In each
of those we are making progress. We made the announcement about
restoring the marketing capacity for England and we now see the
Tourism Alliance, from whom you have just taken evidence, as the
developing single voice for tourism. Tourism felt, when Kim and
I were both appointed after the election, that they had suffered
compared, for instance, to the farmers during the Foot and Mouth
crisis because they did not have an identified single voice and,
therefore, the establishment of the Tourism Alliance was very
much a response to that. In relation to improving the quality
of the sector, we are delighted that we are now making progress
in the establishment of the Sector Skills Council which will improve
the strategic assessment of training and development needs. We
are also, with the LGA, now seeing the beginning of the "fitness
for purpose" pilots. Fourthly, in relation to improving data
supply, this is one of the re-allocations of function that we
are considering in the wake of the creation of the new body and
I would expect that some of this function will sit within my Department,
although some may continue with the new body, but that is at the
moment the subject of discussion. That is a very quick description
of where we are with the reform programme.
Chairman: Thank you very much.
MR
DORAN
145. As someone who is not an expert in the
tourism industry, when I looked through the various submissions
that we have received, one thing seemed to be clearly obvious
and that is that we do not seem to have any long-term strategy
for the industry, and certainly not a strategy to deal with emergencies.
It seems difficult to plan for the two emergencies we have had
in the past two years, but it does seem to be a little bit ad
hoc. Is what you have outlined, Secretary of State, the beginning
of a longer-term strategy?
(Tessa Jowell) Yes, it is and in setting out the four-point
plan, which was the result of the discussions at Hartwell, those
conclusions were reached precisely to address the structural weaknesses
in the industry and it is an industry which is characteristically
fragmented, unmodernised, with a very low skills base, offering
a highly variable product and without the benefit of modern technology
in order to make it more consumer-friendly. It is also an industry
which, as part of the expression of its fragmentation, is too
rarely the industry of choice that people go into when they are
choosing a career because of the perception of a lot of the jobs
which are part of tourism, so the modernisation programme, on
which we are embarked, is in part about improving the public sector
institutional arrangements, but it is much more importantly in
the long run about dealing with the structural weaknesses that
we have now identified.
146. One of the changes has been the added responsibilities
of the British Tourism Authority and you will be aware of the
sensitivities in some of these issues, particularly in Scotland
and Wales.
(Tessa Jowell) Yes.
147. We are already hearing some of these concerns.
I am interested to know whether this is something that you see
as a long-term or permanent arrangement or whether there is a
temporary arrangement where the Government progresses its regional
development strategy because the concern, as I am sure you are
aware, in Scotland is that if the body has international marketing
responsibilities for the whole of the UK and at the same time
has marketing responsibilities exclusively within the UK for England,
then there is a clear conflict of responsibilities and that is
a matter of major concern.
(Tessa Jowell) Let me answer that because in the discussions
that I have had with the First Minister both in Scotland and in
Wales, this has been the major concern that we have been seeking
to navigate and we are where we are with the devolution settlement,
so any arrangements for marketing Britain to the rest of the world
has to take account of that and to recognise that both the Scottish
and the Welsh Tourist Board will also choose to do their own sort
of country-specific marketing. We do see the new arrangements
that I announced at the end of October as permanent arrangements.
I am very clear that they are arrangements that will operate on
the basis of trust and confidence, hence I hope with growing confidence
that there is no threat to the devolution settlement and that
it may become possible over time for us to undertake joint marketing
of the domestic UK market, but you are absolutely right that some
offence has been caused in the past by a perception that the BTA
has been more of an English body than a British body.
148. But you have underlined and emphasised
the fact that it is an English-based body. A more rational or
simpler approach might have been simply to give the English Tourism
Council the powers.
(Tessa Jowell) With respect, I do not think I have
done that. What we are seeking to do with the successor body to
the BTA and the ETC is to do two things: first of all, to establish
a body that will market Great Britain to the rest of the world;
and, secondly, a body which will contain within it, but with a
very high level of transparency, a responsibility for marketing
England.
149. We have heard evidence earlier this morning
from the Tourism Alliance and the creation of that body partly
came from the Department, but in the discussions that we had with
them I have to say there were some areas of concern. One of these
areas of concern was that they seemed to represent simply the
employer side of the industry, yet you are talking about the development
of skills and most of the objectives which the Department has
set relate to quality, the poor quality of services, the poor
quality of training and poor staff quality. It is also one of
the areas which is amongst the lowest paid in the country and
I am a bit concerned to see that there is no trade union input
in the Alliance. The paper that we have had, I made the point
to the Alliance that it was a bit CBI-ish. In fact it was virtually
all the arguments that we hear regularly from the CBI about all
the regulation, too much legislation, purely a small business
agenda. If there is to be a proper partnership, it needs to be
wider and I would be interested in your views on that.
(Dr Howells) First of all, you are quite right, there
is no trade union input and right from the very beginning it was
designed as an employer-led body which has also got a local government
representation as well and there is good reason for that. It was
felt that if we were going to get the industry to buy into some
national strategy, it had to be just that, the industry. Also
it is an industry which has got very scattered, very patchy trade
union representation within it and we were very, very keen that
when—
150. Can I just make a comment on that. Yesterday
I sat on a TUC judging panel and one of the commending trade unions,
I cannot announce the result, but one of the commending trade
unions was Prospect who have just recently organised themselves
a national trust for Scotland and have quoted 400 new members.
It is the sort of organisation that is vital to the tourism industry
and that is happening partly because of government legislation.
(Dr Howells) Well, I celebrate that. I am not in the
least trying to say that there is not a great need for trade union
representation in there, but in a sense that has made my point.
This is a very peculiar industry, it is a very fragmented industry
and there are some very big players and a huge host of tiny players
in this body. The great problem with the Tourism Alliance has
been trying to construct something which accurately reflects the
nature of that industry and they are. We have been criticised,
for example, for over-emphasis on the need for representing the
big players in the industry and there is a degree of truth in
that and one of the great missions that the Tourism Alliance has
had is to make sure that it does reach out and appeal to all those
bed and breakfasts and everybody down there. Therefore, my answer
would be that we cannot see it as a wholly representative body
and it is impossible because of the nature of the industry, but
we do see it as a body which will give the industry a coherent
voice with which to speak to government and if at some stage,
and I hope it is sooner rather than later, the trade union movement
wishes to be part of that Tourism Alliance, then I would welcome
it.
Derek Wyatt
151. The first two questions are about our image
really and our image abroad and the complication of a single message
that we are trying to tell people to come here. In California
we now have six RDA offices which are separate from our Consulate
and our Embassy in Washington. They have a tourism interest. We
have a BTA office and we have three Consulate offices in California,
so if you are a citizen in California, which is, after all, the
seventh biggest economy of the world, you will travel a lot, and
they do travel a lot to Britain, how can we stop these myriad
offices spending taxpayers' money, not reporting any good structure
within the economics adviser at the Consulate and at the Embassy
in Washington? This is not sensible, so what discussions have
you had with the DTI to make sure that the tourism focus does
not get dissipated and gives the wrong message? That is the first
part. The second part is if you come into Heathrow, Gatwick or
Stansted there is no welcome, there is no "Welcome to Britain",
there is not an array of places you can see and they are not in
different languages, and there is no computer on this side of
the carousel that you can type into. There is no one to say, "Hello,
welcome". If you are really trying to sell this place, it
is not a good image and I would just welcome your comments.
(Tessa Jowell) We are just dividing up the two parts
of your question. If I can deal with the question about the coherence
of information, this is as of now a major problem. It is one of
the reasons why the function of the new body will in part be to
develop e-tourism and to develop a greater coherence in the access
to e-tourism, the quality of e-tourism than is the case at the
moment. It will be a service both for the industry, but also it
will be a service for your Californian potential visitor whom
we very much hope will come back if they have had a previous visit
to Britain or will visit for the first time. The intention will
be that there will be a `Visit Britain' website with links to
other relevant websites which will increase the quality of the
information and the certainty of the tourism product, but also
enable people to book online as people are increasingly doing.
(Dr Howells) Perhaps I could start with the last part
of your question. The British Tourist Authority of course did
an inspection of all our main airports and made a series of recommendations,
very few of which have been carried out until now, to the British
Airports Authority about the way in which visitors are welcomed.
I have become a sort of shopper in this respect in that whenever
I come into this country or go anywhere I try to gauge what kind
of welcome travellers receive when they get here and I think generally
we do not give a very good welcome to people when they come here.
Those first impressions are very important, I absolutely agree
with that, and I hope very much that the Airports Authority wake
up to that fact. I think especially that Heathrow needs improvement
in this sense. It is a vast airport and I realise the difficulties
that they face, but we have got to improve our act, I think, in
the way in which we welcome people into this country. On the question
of all these offices, I did not know until I read the transcript
of the hearing that this Committee had with, I think, ETC and
BTA that there were six RDA offices in California alone. I did
not know that. I have been trying to come to terms with Wales
having one office in New York. I agree entirely with the sentiments
which, Mr Wyatt, you expressed in that hearing. I think it is
madness that we are seeing, with this new creature of devolved
politics, we are seeing offices opening around the world. This,
in my view, is the wrong way to spend taxpayers' money. I think
the BTA has a very good track record, though it can improve of
course. It has got a new Chief Executive who is intent upon improving
it and we ought to make much more co-ordinated use of those BTA
offices around the world—
152. If I can just interrupt you there, if we
are really interested in e-tourism, the simplest thing would have
been to be given a front office in our consulates or our embassies
which is just an office as they do not have to serve, because
when you just dial, phone or e-mail, you do not know where these
people are. Sadly, we have physically opened six separate offices
which is crackers.
(Dr Howells) I agree entirely with that description
of crackers. Can I say this: that the BTA is not beyond criticism
on all of this. I visited their New York office in a very swish
part of town, just off Madison Avenue. I do not know what they
pay in rent for that. We went up a poky little lift from a very
flash vestibule and ended up in an office in which we saw three
people circulate through it during the course of our visit, three
American visitors, and we found out that the percentage of people
who come to this country as a consequence of physically visiting
that office is infinitesimal. I think that the reforms which they
are now announcing where they are going to shrink all of these
offices down to just eight hubs is one of the ways of solving
that problem.
Michael Fabricant
153. You know that the Tourism Alliance who
were giving evidence to us earlier on were asking for a Secretary
of State just for Tourism at Cabinet level, but we do not even
really have a minister for tourism, do we, because the multi-talented
Kim Howells, and I have a list of his ministerial responsibilities
which the Clerk got for me, is in charge of tourism, licensing,
broadcasting, film and the press, creative industries, including
being an art critic, information technology, which includes e-government,
social policy, access and equal opportunities. Is it, therefore,
not unsurprising that so many people who have given evidence to
us say that not sufficient weight is being given to tourism by
the Department of Culture, Media and Sport?
(Tessa Jowell) Well, let me take that one. Yes, Kim
and I often get representations from the industry about whether
or not tourism should be specifically in the title of the Department.
I have to say that maybe nobody would want to hurt our feelings,
but that is the point that is more often raised than having a
dedicated Minister for Tourism or a dedicated Secretary of State
for Tourism. My sense is that there is a sense of constructive
partnership with the industry, there is a sense of competence
in the industry and there is a sense that broadly the reforms
that we are proposing are reforms that the industry wants and
supports. We have spent an enormous amount of time over the last
18 months or so talking to the industry because I think that what
is just unsustainable is a position where government has one set
of policies without the leaders to effect the change and the industry
has another set of aspirations. I actually think that this is
an issue which will arise and arise again. I think that we need
to be judged on the results of our efforts and certainly so far
they are efforts which I think, because the industry are working
so closely with us, broadly show confidence in the industry and
I think that means that the Government and industry partnership
was a further weakness which was identified.
154. Surely you are talking to industry and
we heard this morning from the Tourism Alliance that you meet
with them frequently, but do you talk with them and indeed listen
to them? Both the Tourism Alliance, the ETC and the BTA said that
maybe you do not listen to them. Both of them have made representations
saying that they thought that the ETC and the BTA should not have
merged. Why did you not listen to their advice? They are the experts.
(Tessa Jowell) Well, I would separate out from the
list that you gave the Tourism Alliance which is the representative
of industry. It is a coalition representing a range of industries,
as Kim said a few moments ago, tending to be the big players rather
than the smaller players. From the ETC and the BTA, I think it
is perfectly natural at a human level where organisations are
faced with the degree of change that both the ETC and BTA are,
the natural and human inclination is to resist that change and
to argue against it, but the need for change has been made crystal
clear to us by the industry, so the answer is yes, we have listened
to the industry and I pay tribute both to the BTA and the ETC
for the spirit in which they have taken forward and are taking
forward the proposals that we indicated we wanted to see on the
basis of our industry consultation.
155. I do not think anyone would deny there
was a need for change, but the question is of course, "Was
it the right change?" Is not the imbalance which now exists
with the new organisation strange where you have Scotland and
Wales having their own organisations to promote inward tourism
and then you have the new BTA promoting all three? It is a huge
imbalance and of course you have got an even greater imbalance
between the amounts of money that are being spent. England has
£10 million for all the area of England, Wales has £18
million and Scotland has £25 million. You will have heard
these figures before. What role do you think the CMS has, the
Department has, to try and ensure that not only are there adequate
funds for the promotion of the United Kingdom as a whole, but
that there is a more even balance between the various nationalities
which make up the United Kingdom?
(Dr Howells) I think you have highlighted figures
and the figures vary according to whom you talk to.
Chairman
156. No, they do not. They do not.
(Dr Howells) They do.
157. They do not. Over and over and over again
on inquiry after inquiry this Committee has found that the amounts
of money for England are very much smaller not only per capita,
but in total compared with Wales and Scotland. The figures do
not vary.
(Dr Howells) Well, I absolutely agree with that. What
I am saying is that the latest figures that I have got are probably
even more shocking than the ones that Mr Fabricant came up with.
I understand that the Government's spending on tourism per head
reads like this: 24p in England; £8.10 in Wales; and £5.50
in Scotland. Now, those are very big differences and even bigger
than the ones which I have just heard. However, in terms of results,
what they produce, which is something the Treasury looks at very
closely of course, there is very little correlation between them.
If one looks, for example, at overseas visitor spend last year
in this country, England accounted for £9.9 billion worth
of it, Wales for £250 million and Scotland for £760
million. They are tiny percentages of that overseas visitor spend
in this country. If one looks at domestic visitors, the figures
are just startling. What I am saying is that there are historic
reasons which go way back for this spend and it is usually explained
away by saying that it is there to correct market failure which
it most certainly is and one wonders what England could do if
it did have £8 per head to spend on tourism and what it would
do in turn to Wales and Scotland of course. These are decisions
which all governments have made for very long periods of time.
Chairman: It is a long time since I was
a Member of the Government, but when I was a Member of the Government,
the one thing I learned, if I learned nothing else, was never
to trust figures provided by the Treasury in order to justify
their lack of expenditure!
Michael Fabricant
158. I will just ask one more supplementary
which I must ask. On the 24p per head, the figure you have just
given for England, what hope have small cities like Lichfield
got in promoting themselves internationally?
(Dr Howells) That is a very good question and I will
say this: I think that the regime which we have had up until now
has not taken sufficient account of how it might be possible to
get visitors out of London and to places like Lichfield. Half
of the visitors that came to this country last year did not go
outside of London or, if they did, this is where they stayed most
of the time and they would have gone maybe on a day trip to Lichfield.
That has huge consequences on tourism and expenditure in those
areas. We have got to try and get people out of here and staying
in places like Lichfield.
Miss Kirkbride
159. Could we pursue this unfairness a little
bit more. What representations has your Department made to boost
the amount of money that is available to England to market itself
for tourism because it is a grossly unfair set of figures, whatever
justification the Treasury comes forward with?
(Tessa Jowell) Well, we obviously included our bid
for tourism as part of our overall bid for the 2002 Spending Round
settlement.
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