Tourism and Hospitality

Lord Lee of Trafford Excerpts

Wednesday 21st January 2015 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Lee of Trafford]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their latest estimate of the number of people employed in the tourism and hospitality sectors.

[Lord Lee of Trafford (LD)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and, in doing so, I declare an interest as the chairman of the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble (Con)]

My Lords, the tourism and hospitality industries are major employers in the United Kingdom. In 2013, Deloitte estimated that tourism and hospitality supported 3.1 million jobs, accounting for 9.6% of all jobs. Both the Government and the industry are committed to nurturing growth in tourism through the creation of high-quality jobs, while giving young people every opportunity to forge rewarding and lasting careers in the sectors.

[Lord Lee of Trafford]

I am grateful to my noble friend. According to the British Hospitality Association, at present there are 158,000 job vacancies in the hospitality sector, at all levels of skills. Given that figure, first, what are the Government doing to encourage the take-up by SMEs of apprenticeships and, secondly, is there not an opportunity here for a major partnership programme between government and industry—between the prisons and the hospitality sector—to provide a training bridge for prisoners, to give them hope and a career opportunity post coming out of prison? That would do something to turn and improve our appalling recidivism rates, in parallel to the Evening Standard’s excellent programme to encourage business start-ups in prisons.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, SMEs account for 80% of the tourism industry, so it is extremely important that we help SMEs to flourish through things like the deregulation task force. They are a very important part of the sector. The British Hospitality Association is looking to create further employment by the end of this year, with pledges of 60,000 jobs. The work that the Prison Service and, I think, the Clink Charity are undertaking with restaurants at certain prisons that I have heard of has been immensely successful. This is an example of where, in partnership, we can make some real progress.