Tourism

Baroness Valentine Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Valentine]

I could not agree more. First, I declare that I am chief executive of London First, a not-for-profit business membership organisation. I, too, am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Lee, for calling this debate. If I may, I would like to turn his Motion on its head and suggest some things that the Government could stop doing. I will focus on three disincentives for tourists: first, barriers to entry; secondly, the quality of the welcome; and thirdly, the cost of departure.

Taking entry first, the World Economic Forum’s latest competitiveness rankings show that the UK has fallen from 22nd to 46th in terms of its visa requirements. China’s burgeoning middle class spends around three times as much as other tourists. However, the requirement to apply for two European visas—one for the 26 Schengen countries and one for Britain—is a turn-off. Four out of five do not come to the UK, representing an opportunity cost of more than £1 billion annually. The Government are working hard to improve the process, including investigating partnering with other European countries to provide a one-stop shop for visas, whereby, even though the screening processes are different, documents and information can be provided just once. Whatever the solution, we need to be an integral part of any European tour rather than an optional add-on.

Turning to the welcome that tourists receive, in the past we have seen long queues clogging up border control. Here, too, I have been encouraged by progress at the UK Border Force. The UKBF should be given the necessary resource, including the ability to get more and better data quickly, combined with a flexible operating culture to hit tough queue targets, at the same time as keeping out undesirables.

Finally, on tax, in the rankings to which I referred earlier, the UK comes last for airport charges, largely due to air passenger duty. If our goal is to attract visitors, it seems strange to charge them so heavily for leaving.

I return to the official topic of this debate. There are things that the Government can do or continue to do. The GREAT campaign was a good first step, but we must regard marketing the UK as a positive investment rather than an unwelcome expense. Are we really spending enough to maximise the Olympic legacy? Tourism is not a “nice to have”. It is the UK’s third largest export earner. More than that, tourist activity is often the first step to future economic activity. Today’s visitors bearing cameras may well be tomorrow’s investors, and we should therefore do all we can to ensure that they go home with plenty of pictures of red carpets.