Examination of Witnesses (Questions 353-359)
MR BILL
WELLS AND
MR JEREMY
GROOMBRIDGE
17 OCTOBER 2006
Q353 Chair: Can I start off with the
question which I think is puzzling all of us. We have been told
in most of the submissions from most other groups that one of
the issues about coastal towns is a great deal of low-paid employment
and high seasonality, and yet the jobcentre figures that you have
given us for the coastal towns that you have cited appears to
suggest that temporary employment is not higher in coastal towns
in other areas. Is temporary employment different from seasonal
employment, or is everybody else wrong?
Mr Wells: Seasonal employment
is included in temporary employment in these figures. These figures
are taken from the Labour Force Survey, which is a household survey,
in the individual areas that it is carried out. It is nationally
representative. I think one of the issues may be around difference
in scale rather than anything else. I think it may have been true
more in the past that coastal towns were more dependent on seasonal
and tourism work than they are at the moment, but there are many
other forms of employment (for example retailing, construction,
schools), and although in some coastal towns there are issues
about seasonality, it still remains the case that the vast bulk
of employment tends not to be associated with tourism; so there
may be obvious examples but there are many other forms of employment.
Q354 Chair: I think I am having further
difficulties with your grasp. I realise you have given us the
number of jobs in tourism in these different places.
Mr Wells: Yes.
Q355 Chair: You have not given us
the proportion of the jobs in those areas which are related to
tourism.
Mr Wells: But they are quite low.
We can provide you with those numbers.
Chair: I think that would be helpful
as a corollary of that.
Q356 Lyn Brown: Is it not the definition
of what you define to be a tourism-related job that might be at
issue here? For instance, I presume there is more laundry during
the times of high season in a tourist place, but you would not
necessarily equate the higher volume of work or workers within
the laundry sector as tourist-related employment, would you?
Mr Wells: Not necessarily, no.
You are quite right, in the sense that—
Q357 Lyn Brown: So a job could be
seasonal and attached to the tourism industry without necessarily
being called a job which is created because of tourism?
Mr Wells: Yes, but I think it
remains true that, as there has been a movement away from tourism,
in the sense of two-week holidays in Clacton, or whatever, the
reliance on seasonal industries has actually diminished, both
because that industry has declined but also because other forms
of employment have grown.
Q358 Lyn Brown: The two-week holiday
has declined but the day-trippers and the week-enders are still
there.
Mr Wells: Yes.
Q359 Lyn Brown: One still sees a
significant increase in visitor numbers at seaside resorts during
the traditional holiday periods?
Mr Wells: Yes, but part of the
diversification in some, but by no mean all, coastal towns is
that the day-trippers and the week-enders come not just during
the seasonal period. There are different forms of tourism: business
tourism or pop concerts or whatever. I should also say (which
I think is a theme of our memorandum) that actually it differs
from town to town and there are big differences between the different
coastal towns. I would not want to say that there is no problem
with seasonality in every town. I suspect I am saying that seasonality
and temporary jobs are relatively smaller now than they used to
be in the past and there also tend to be vacancies coming up because
of the natural turnover in the labour market.
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