Examination of Witness(Questions 273-279)
MR MIKE
WATSON
TUESDAY 26 NOVEMBER 2002
Chairman
273. Mr Watson, it is a particular pleasure
to welcome you here today. I am going to launch the questioning
with Alan Keen. Do I discern from your face that you would like
to say something to us first?
(Mr Watson) I have a short statement
to make, if that is okay. It is a pleasure for me as a Scottish
Executive Minister to be asked to give evidence at a House of
Commons Select Committee. I think that is an important way within
general terms of defining the relationship between the Scottish
Parliament, the Scottish Executive in the post-devolution period
and I would like to think—it has not happened yet—that
we could soon be in a position where the Scottish Parliament could
ask for Whitehall ministers to come and give evidence and that
they would feel they were comfortable enough to do so. However,
I am very pleased to be here today. I know that you and your members
have seen my written submission and that confirms where the Executive
believes the challenges lie for Scottish tourism and it also sets
out the key strategic priorities which we have identified as crucial
to the success of Scottish tourism. Much has been made of the
impact of Foot and Mouth Disease and September 11 in 2001 and
of course these events had a huge impact on tourism across Scotland
and particularly Dumfries and Galloway and the Borders. The figures
show that tourism activity in Scotland had been in decline for
some years before that after a sustained period of growth through
to the mid-1990s and that decline is not particular to Scotland
but mirrors the pattern at UK level and the reasons for that I
think Members will already be aware of. It does need to be seen
against a continuing growth in international tourism and it has
happened despite significant increases in investment in Scottish
tourism and the VisitScotland budget has more than doubled over
the last decade. So the major challenge facing us in Scotland,
and in the UK, is to reverse that decline and to re-establish
tourism as a growth sector in the Scottish and UK economies. As
I have said in my statement, we have focused in Scotland on five
priorities for tourism: improving the structure of tourism funding
and that is taking the form of the Area Tourist Board review;
improving the marketing of Scotland under the new marketing strategy
developed by VisitScotland which is now in place and is paying
dividends; improving the use of technology to understand and meet
the needs of our visitors and that is our website visitscotland.com,
a new tourism initiative which was launched earlier this year;
improving product quality, and improving employee skills and training.
The last two are the ones we have concentrated on because these
are the ones where we have not made much headway. Work is under
way on all of these. I have just come from a meeting of the DCMS
across Whitehall and the devolved administrations and we discussed
both the issue of product quality and employee skills and training
and I am encouraged by the positive spirit of co-operation demonstrated
at that meeting and I am sure we will turn that into effective
action in future meetings. I think it would be appropriate for
me to say a little bit about our relationship with the British
Tourist Authority and our views on the recently announced changes
because I know the Committee is interested in that. The Executive
keeps in close contact with the DCMS on tourism issues, both at
ministerial and official level and that relationship worked well
in the weeks before the DCMS announcement. We were briefed first
at official level, then First Minister Jack McConnell discussed
our concerns with the Secretary of State, Tessa Jowell and I also
had a discussion with Kim Howells. I see the BTA restructuring
as certainly potentially good for Scottish tourism and it was
on that basis that the First Minister and I were able to welcome
Tessa Jowell's announcement. DCMS have agreed that the activities
of and funding for the new English marketing be kept entirely
separate from the overseas marketing efforts of the BTA and to
make this a reality the DCMS have agreed to consult the Scottish
Executive on a number of key aspects of the BTA's operations.
They have also agreed that they will lay a copy of their Annual
Report and Accounts before the Scottish Parliament in future.
I am clear that our agreement with DCMS on these arrangements
will ensure that there is no dilution of BTA marketing effort
on behalf on Scotland in overseas tourism markets. Clearly we
will have to work to ensure that that is the case, but I am confident
that it can and will be on the basis of the understandings that
we have. BTA have offered VisitScotland a desk in every one of
their overseas hub offices and VisitScotland are currently reviewing
how best to take up this offer. The UK remains the priority market
for VisitScotland, accounting for over 90 per cent of tourism
trips in Scotland. But growing the overseas market is hugely important
to the future success of Scottish tourism. I am determined it
should once again be a growth sector within the Scottish economy
and I am clear that the restructuring of BTA will help us to achieve
that objective.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed.
I should point out to the Committee that we have got a limited
time for the Minister so I am going to ration time pretty briskly.
Alan Keen
274. Welcome, Mike. That was all very fascinating,
but can I come on to what is really the point. We have done a
lot of good work on this Committee in the past on the value of
hosting sporting events. What value do you put on your bid for
the European football championships in partnership with Ireland
and how do you see it going? Presumably it will have a long-term
benefit in raising Scotland's profile.
(Mr Watson) Our bid with Ireland for the Euro 2008
football championships are part of the major events strategy that
we are trying to develop. There will be a formal announcement
on this later in the week by the First Minister, but it is very
much our aim to position Scotland as a serious player in major
events in the years ahead and that is not just sporting events,
it could be cultural, major conferences, major exhibitions, anything
on a big scale that brings people to Scotland and lets people
see what Scotland has to offer apart from the event itself. We
will hear the outcome in just over two weeks' time. I can only
say that we are hopeful. We have done everything we can do. We
have worked very well with the Irish and we have made our bid
and it deserves to be successful. I do not think there is anything
else we could have done. The benefits to Scotland will be clear
and go well beyond the three weeks or so of the event in June
2008. It would be about positioning Scotland as a destination
that is attractive and seen to be so, perhaps more so if people
have not thought about coming to Scotland for whatever reason
in the past. There will be investment in infrastructure, in the
new stadiums, in associated sports facilities, in youth sport
as well, they will all benefit. I have responsibility also for
culture and sport which is increasingly linked with tourism. Although
we do not have a figure where we can say if we are successful
on the 12 December this will mean £x million or billion over
the years, what I do know is that it will greatly enhance Scotland
as a visitor attraction and it will show that modern Scotland
has a lot to offer that perhaps some people do not realise yet.
So we will be marketing that in its broadest sense if we are successful
on 12 December.
Alan Keen: Good luck with that.
Derek Wyatt
275. It is very good to hear that the FA is
supporting the Scottish-Irish bid. Can we count on the Scottish
Rugby Union supporting the English bid for the World Cup in 2007
and if we cannot, can we get the Scottish Parliament to endorse
it?
(Mr Watson) Let me just say that obviously we have
made our case to Jeff Thomson, who is the FA representative on
the UEFA Executive. He has not stated specifically what he intends
to do, he certainly has not stated it publicly. We have made a
strong case to him just as we have to all the members of the Executive
who will be voting on 12 December. As far as the Rugby World Cup
is concerned, I know that England has announced that it is going
to bid. There are still discussions going on within Scotland.
There is a possibility that Scotland, along with other countries,
may also submit a bid. I was talking as recently as Sunday with
senior people from the Scottish Rugby Union and they have not
yet decided what their position will be. I have got to say, there
was a feeling—and I expressed this at the meeting of UK
sports ministers in Cardiff in June—that the RFU bid was
perhaps a little bit too quickly endorsed by Richard Caborn and
I said this to Richard himself. I think it is important in a situation
where we do not have British countries competing against one another,
whatever the sport is, if there is a major event to come I would
rather that the home countries get together and decide a way forward.
Rugby has been fraught recently. We know all about the television
deal and it has not been possible and the RFU have gone their
own way on that. I suspect that this is a fall out. At this stage
I cannot give the support you would like me to give because there
is the possibility that Scotland may be part of another bid.
276. Can I ask you about transport. If tourism
is your number one business in Scotland and if most English now
take their holidays abroad but go for the short, fast breaks,
ie for four days or the three days to Scotland you become a much
more interesting proposition again, but if you cannot fly to most
of the destinations directly and you have to go to Glasgow and
then drive or you have to go to Glasgow by train and drive it
makes it less attractive. I am thinking of the Islands where it
is the most beautiful place on earth, where we would like to go
more often, but getting there is so difficult from the South-East.
In the Green Paper on airports are you planning smaller airports
like City Airport across those areas to attract even more destination
tourists?
(Mr Watson) This is another matter we were discussing
with DCMS colleagues this morning and John Spellar, the Transport
Minister, was there for that part of the discussion. It is a big
issue in Scotland, more so in terms of flights from abroad than
it is from within the UK. There are issues with that and I will
come to that in a minute. There are not enough flights from countries
like, for instance, Sweden and we had the Scotland in Sweden promotion
just last month. There are no direct flights from Stockholm to
Edinburgh or Glasgow but that will change in the not too distant
future. That is a difficulty. If people have to come to the UK
and go to London, frankly, they are not going to do that for a
four-day break. If you live in Stockholm and you want four days
away you are not going to go to London and then to Glasgow or
Edinburgh, it does not make sense. Even in terms of a longer break,
there is a psychological barrier if you have got to take four
flights instead of two. One of the ways we are tackling that—and
this would impact also on internal UK short break holidays—is
that we announced a week ago a route development fund which will
basically enable landing charges at airports to be subsidised.
That has been a problem particularly with Inverness. You mentioned
the Islands, but Inverness is a case in point. Quite a few of
the Islands flights go from Inverness. You cannot get direct to
Inverness—you can from Gatwick—from places like Manchester
or Birmingham, but if you cannot get there direct then that is
a problem. Part of the problem is that you will want to get the
cut price airlines to fly to Inverness, and one of them in particular
rather publicly made the point that they were not prepared to
do it unless landing charges were reduced. In a sense there has
been a response to that, recognising that those handling charges
had to come down. The question of flights to the Islands is a
slightly different issue, although it is an issue within Scotland
as well. People who have got family in the Islands often complain
about the frequency or the cost of flights from Glasgow or Edinburgh
to Stornaway and that is something that is slightly different.
There are a number of reduced price flights certainly from Aberdeen
to Orkney and Shetland but not enough and that is an issue that
we have also been discussing with the airlines. I am aware of
the point that you make and I am hopeful that the route development
fund money we have announced will enable more internal UK flights
to be available from the cut price airlines so that people from
all parts of England can have those short breaks in Scotland.
Mr Doran
277. It is nice to welcome you back, Mike, and
it is also nice to welcome a fellow Arab to the House of Commons.
I will leave everyone else to speculate what that means. I listened
carefully to what you said about the new arrangements concerning
the British Tourist Authority. We have heard quite a lot of evidence
now from a number of sources, including from the Scottish bodies
today and at best you can say that they are unenthusiastic about
the proposals. I think there are concerns about the conflict of
interest which the BTA will have and you have made it quite clear
in what you said. When the Secretary of State was here last week
she made it clear that this had been discussed between the Governments
and agreed between the Governments. Does it not concern you that
the people who will actually have to deal with this on the ground,
people like VisitScotland and the various other agencies, are
not showing a lot of enthusiasm for this change?
(Mr Watson) I would not dispute the way in which you
have characterised the response to the changes. Within the last
hour I have said that, in terms of Tessa Jowell asking me what
I thought, I was happy with the assurances that we got, but the
new regime is not in place yet. If we were meeting a year today
I might have a different attitude and I might be raising the issues
or problems that have arisen. We have asked for assurances. Our
First Minister asked for assurances and we got them in writing.
We will have to see how it operates. If it operates as we intend
it will then it will not be a problem, but there are issues that
will have to be addressed and they can only really be assessed
when they arise. There is a possibility of VisitScotland having
a presence in the BTA hub offices that they are going to have.
There are other aspects you have heard from VisitScotland and
there is the possibility of developing Scotland internationally,
that is another prospect. We will have to see within the resources
given to VisitScotland what can be done in terms of a direct presence
there. I can only say that the two BTA offices that I have visited
so far this year have been in New York and Stockholm and they
have both certainly impressed me with what they were doing on
Scotland's behalf. You could say that is now, what about the future?
We will have to ensure that the assurances that we have got are
carried forward.
278. Once the thing is up and running will there
be scope for change? We heard earlier from Mr Lederer about the
distractions, for example. I can understand why they do not want
to get sucked into a debate about structures and processes. This
is an industry which is very competitive, it operates with quite
a number of constraints and I can see why the professionals want
to focus, but at the same time we have to be concerned about the
structures that are being put in place. I accept what you are
saying about monitoring, but a year from now change will be costly
and expensive. Now is when we need to see the problems.
(Mr Watson) What I am saying is that the problems
that we have identified we have sought assurances on and all I
can say at this stage is that we are satisfied with that. Obviously
I have discussed this with VisitScotland as well. We are not looking
into the future and saying we think everything will necessarily
work out as we anticipated, but what I will say is that changes
can be made. If something is not working effectively and if I
am still the Minister then we will be lobbying very strongly for
those changes to be made.
279. We heard some very impressive and very
focused evidence earlier from the various Scottish bodies that
we have heard from today and I certainly was impressed and pleased
at what I heard. There is clearly a strategy, and everyone talked
positively about the partnership it operates between government
and industry which is extremely important. One of the clear differences
between Scotland and England, apart from the amount of money that
is spent on tourism, is that Scotland has a seat at the Cabinet
table. Given you have a seat at the Cabinet table, can you say
a little about exactly what advantages you feel that gives the
tourism industry in Scotland?
(Mr Watson) About this time last year the major tourism
hospitality sector conference in Scotland called for a tourism
minister within the Cabinet. I think what they probably called
for was a dedicated minister who had nothing to do but tourism.
I also have responsibility for culture and sport and Gaelic and
heritage and so on. I have a deputy minister who concentrates
more on the culture and sport aspects and I lead very clearly
on tourism. I think that change made by the new First Minister
was a statement that there was a recognition of the importance
of the sector to the Scottish economy. The fact that I am a Cabinet
minister simply enables me to deal with issues on a one-to-one
basis within the Cabinet in a way that was not the case in the
past. There were previous ministers who had responsibility for
tourism but they all floated on to become junior ministers. That
has changed and that sort of focus and status has been given.
I am sure if the VisitScotland and Scottish Tourism Forum people
sitting behind me were to be asked if that had translated into
sufficient extra funding they would at least have to consider
the opposition and I understand that. At the same time, I do feel
I am in a stronger position to argue for additional resources
not just for VisitScotland but for other sources of funding for
Scottish tourism.
Mr Doran: Thank you very much.
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