Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-87)
2 DECEMBER 2003
Tessa Jowell, Ms Sue Street, and Mr Keith Smith,
examined.
Q80 Mr Flook: Secretary of State, I have
been looking at page 50, the BTA used advertising to win overseas
visitors back to Britain. If you do look at page 17, and it may
be a chance for Mr Smith to get on the score sheet, we can see
that for overseas visitors to the United Kingdom expenditure dropped
9% from the year before last and then climbed 4%. That is a provisional
figure of 11.8 billion. Six months after the Report came out do
we know what that figure is?
Chairman: I can tell you, it is 6%, but
we now have a £15 billion deficit on tourism.
Tessa Jowell: Yes.
Q81 Mr Flook: The real thing is if we
increase the amount of money that we have spent, more money on
the Million Visitor Campaign, can you explain how we are going
to get higher spending visitors to Britain?
Tessa Jowell: That means getting
Americans back. Americans are more reluctant than they have ever
been before to get on planes, hence the Million Visitor Campaign
was directed at Americans, at Far Eastern destinations and at
destinations in Western Europe. There are two drivers of the balance
of payments deficit, one is the loss of high spending American
visitors, the second is that more of us are going abroad and spending
more, that is how the balance of payments deficit is increasing.
What can we do to deal with that? We can encourage more people
to take holidays at home by improving the tourism offered in this
country in line with the answers I gave to Mr Thurso. We can also
continue our efforts to get more Americans and high value tourists,
who spend six pounds for every pound we spend, so that is why
spend is so sharply down, although numbers are recovering.
Q82 Mr Flook: Just on that point, you
said six pounds for every pound, what is the projected ratio with
sterling climbing against the dollar?
Tessa Jowell: Can I let have you
that?
Q83 Mr Flook: Please do.
Tessa Jowell: I do not have it
in my briefing and we would have to model it.
Q84 Mr Flook: It does not relate to the
last fiscal year since then the dollar has fallen. I would appreciate
knowing that.
Tessa Jowell: We can let you have
that.
Q85 Mr Flook: We are all aware that the
Rate Support Grant was announced a couple of weeks ago and it
is going to be a very difficult time for many councils. Somerset
has a dual system and it is the county council that runs the libraries,
I do not know what they are going to do with the libraries. I
know that you said that you set the standards and that there are
lots of problems, as Mr Keen pointed out, and trying to get them
to the open more than five days a week, it is not just on Sundays,
it is seven days a week. I am sure there is going to be some pressure
on those budgets, and I appreciate the DCMS sets the standards,
what help or contingency plans has the DCMS for councils—I
do not say this for Somerset as a whole because I do not know
but they have already said they are going to cut rural bus services—what
help are they going to be giving in down-sizing the money they
spend on libraries? Like everything else it is going to come under
some severe pressure. I speculate.
Ms Street: The library provision
is a statutory duty of local authority, so they are going to face
some difficulties obviously. What we can do through the strategic
body resource is more in terms of explaining best practice. As
we said earlier it is not the biggest spending libraries that
are necessarily the best. I think it is has to be round dialogue,
information, sharing best practice and using the sort of seed
corn monies of round three million to make sure that we are assisting
them in the best way that we can.
Q86 Mr Flook: Ms Street, earlier you
said that the attitude of the Department had changed in the last
two years with regard to what you were asking from libraries,
how much information have you got to be able to pass on that best
practice? How well worked-up are the models and examples to pass
to Somerset?
Ms Street: The thing we stopped
doing was loading library plans on them in forms that did not
make sense for citizens who use libraries, that was a step back,
do not use your money on counting things that do not matter. The
monitoring now is through resource and monitoring that they are
discharging their statutory responsibility. As the Secretary of
State said we cannot force them to open hours beyond their obligations.
What we want to do is make sure, as other members of the Committee
have said, that they realise using that capital asset is a good
use of assets. We need to take with them a much wider view, as
Framework for the Future set out, of how libraries can be used.
I think we can also build on the point of your question, through
what is a limited capacity, look at what we can do to advise on
good practice and so forth, provide some development help or development
advice for libraries that, as you suggest, may be going through
a very difficult time
Q87 Chairman: Thank you very much. Secretary
of State, it has been rather a marathon, we are grateful to you
and your officials for sticking it out. Thank you very much indeed.
Tessa Jowell: Thank you very much.
| 
