Tourism

Baroness Valentine Excerpts

Thursday 27th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Valentine]

I congratulate the noble Viscount, Lord Younger, on securing this important debate. I also congratulate all those who have given their maiden speeches today, which have variously been insightful and humorous. In passing, I point out that London’s innovative bike scheme, to which the noble Lord, Lord Palmer of Childs Hill, referred, has been provided by a fellow maiden speaker, the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, through her position on the board of Barclays.

I also extend a personal welcome to the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, whom I have known and respected for many years. In particular, I extend a welcome to the noble Lord, Lord Risby, whose maiden contribution has demonstrated his grasp of the importance of tourism and culture to the UK. I note that he was born in South Africa, which, taken with his chairmanship of the British Ukrainian Society and involvement in the British Syrian Society, will provide a valuable international perspective to your Lordships’ debates. His long experience in the other place will add further insight to your Lordships’ scrutiny of legislation.

I declare that I am chief executive of London First, which is a not-for-profit business membership organisation that includes QEII, ExCeL, Tottenham Hotspur, AEG and Westfield among its many tourism-relevant members. Think London—London’s inward investment agency—is also a separately managed subsidiary of London First. I have much to declare, but also, I hope, some insight to share.

I join the choir of honourable members singing the praises of our cherished heritage and outstanding arts and culture sectors. Annual tourism revenue is more than £100 billion, with some 2.5 million jobs in hospitality alone. The sector contributes more than £34 billion in gross tax revenue. On this scale, tourism can make a significant contribution to desperately sought economic growth. What is more, with our currently competitive exchange rate and with a bit of investment, it can make that contribution now.

The UK offers a tremendous package—Bath’s Georgian delights, Shakespeare’s Stratford, Edinburgh’s Royal Mile, and the Brecon Beacons’ natural splendour— but London is the gateway to the UK. Three-quarters of overseas visitors arrive via the capital and around half of all visitors stay overnight in London. Hotels and restaurants are the sixth largest employer in the capital. Business leaders seek a cultural weekend before a Monday meeting and leisure travellers explore the West End.

As for the promotion of London, the deckchairs are moving. The mayor is bringing together Visit London, Think London and potentially Study London into a new, merged promotional agency. I look forward to that agency building on the Think London staff team’s business ethos, which has ensured that London has remained the top destination for inward investment in Europe for many years. However, I regret that the funding for this agency was temporarily mislaid before Christmas. That seems extraordinary at a time when we are building up to the Olympics and suggests that somebody somewhere is not taking the role of promotion and tourism seriously, despite its—and London’s—manifest contribution to economic growth and, indeed, the sector’s tax contribution.

The new agency has an opportunity to address one of London's shortcomings. Business tourism already makes a contribution of over £24 billion each year to Britain's economy and accounts for about one in five overseas visitors, but it is unacceptable that London languishes at 16th place in the International Congress and Convention Association rankings. We need to co-ordinate, celebrate and sell London as a world business destination. Decades of debate about the merits of an international convention centre have been overtaken by events—if noble Lords will excuse the pun—as ExCeL now has 100,000 square metres of event space and is a world-class venue. However, the future of the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre remains in question. With its unique Westminster location and some imaginative thinking from government, the QEII conference centre could also play its part in London's broad visitor offer.

The Olympics are an obvious opportunity to champion London and the UK to the world. Summer 2012 represents merely the tip of the iceberg. I would not dare opine on the merits of football versus athletics as a future use for the stadium. My plea to the Olympic Park Legacy Company is to dare to dream of a new visitor destination in east London—including the Olympic park itself and the area south to the O2, east to ExCeL and London City Airport and west to Canary Wharf—to create something fabulous for visitors, businesses and residents alike. The Mittal Orbit tower will be iconic, Westfield Stratford will be Europe's largest urban shopping centre and there will even be a river crossing—which the Mayor quips will be a tribute to the Business Secretary—by cable car. Most vital is the stadium's role in securing the overall vision of a dynamic east London. Alongside the iconic, we need the prosaic—business investment and jobs for local people.

Finally, may I nudge the Minister on two issues? First, as other noble Lords have suggested, will she consider making tourist visas less restrictive, time-consuming and expensive? Of the 2 million increasingly spendthrift Chinese visitors to Europe each year, only 5 per cent visit London. Taiwanese visitor numbers soared by 40 per cent when similar restrictions were relaxed. The second, which has also been mentioned, is the queues at Heathrow, on which we must do more. I hope that UK Border Agency staff at Heathrow terminal 4 have learned to sing, dance or at least smile; how else can they welcome and entertain arrivals when one in five non-EU passengers waited for longer than the 45 minute immigration queuing target in the first two weeks of September 2010?

I conclude by wishing all power to the Tourism Minister's elbow. She has a superministry wrapped up in a microministry—a big unpolished diamond that just needs a bit of burnishing to demonstrate its true value. For growth, balance of trade and jobs, tourism is the gift that keeps on giving.