Tourism Levy

Debate between Lord Livermore and Lord Lucas

Monday 14th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

The noble Baroness rightly talks about the importance of the visitor economy. The Tourism Minister has set a goal to grow inbound tourism to 50 million visitors annually by 2030. To help achieve this, DCMS has established a new visitor economy advisory council, which is currently helping to co-create a visitor economy growth strategy, due to be published in the autumn. The strategy endeavours to share the benefits of tourism across every nation and region, including coastal and seaside areas.

The noble Baroness speaks about national insurance increases; it is only a few weeks since we stood here and she supported all the spending in the spending review that that national insurance is funding, so she probably needs to make up her mind whether she supports the spending or does not support the tax that pays for it. As I have already said, we introduced a number of the policies in the Budget to help this sector, including freezing the business rates small business multiplier, together with the small business rates relief. This will exempt over a third of properties from business rates.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, one of the problems that face seaside towns is that homeless people tend to prefer to be there rather than inland. Do the Government have any plans to make sure that the cost of looking after homeless people is shared more fairly and does not fall to such a large extent on seaside towns?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

As I said, the Government announced significant place-based funding in the spending review. Part of that MHCLG funding was targeted specifically at helping homeless people.