Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Sajid Javid and Henry Smith

Thursday 15th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

1. What estimate he has made of the contribution of tourism to the economy.

[The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Sajid Javid)]

The Office for National Statistics estimates that the direct contribution of the tourism sector to the economy in 2013 was £56 billion. Taking account of indirect benefits, Deloitte estimates that in the same year the sector was worth £127 billion gross value added to the UK economy, supporting 3.1 million jobs.

[Henry Smith]

I welcome that response. As my right hon. Friend will know, Crawley contains Gatwick airport, which is a major gateway to the UK. What more can the tourism industry do to ensure that people coming to the UK travel on to other destinations and take advantage of the many benefits and tourist attractions in Crawley and West Sussex?

[Sajid Javid]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. He will be aware that Gatwick is already a major local economic driver, generating some 23,000 jobs at the airport alone, and he is right to ask what more it could do to attract visitors to Crawley and Sussex. He will be aware of Visit Sussex, and I encourage the town to work more closely with that and with Tourism South East, to see what more it can do to show its local attractions.

Air Passenger Duty

Debate between Sajid Javid and Henry Smith

Thursday 1st November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

Absolutely. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that the effects on taxation were taken together and that the Government had determined that the extra 5% was raising hardly any tax whatsoever.

Given that we have recently completed a comprehensive consultation on the subject, we have no plans for further reform at this point.

[Henry Smith]

Would it not be reasonable, though, to have a study, as proposed in the motion, to see the impact on the economy that air passenger duty is having? Surely a study by the Treasury is a reasonable thing to request.

[Sajid Javid]

I thank my hon. Friend. I will come to that point in a moment.

As I said, we have no plans at this point for further consultation, but we are keen to ensure that the aviation sector can continue to enable economic growth and support jobs across the country. APD makes an essential contribution to the public finances and to this Government’s plan to create a stable platform for growth.

This has been an excellent debate that has given me and the Government much food for thought. There have been excellent contributions from Members in all parts of the House, and I assure them that I have been listening very carefully. Should the motion pass; I have a feeling that it might well do so—

The Economy

Debate between Sajid Javid and Henry Smith

Wednesday 22nd June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Henry Smith]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point about the United States, where unemployment is rising because it failed to tackle its deficit early enough. In contrast, in my constituency, Siemens has just announced 600 new jobs. That is proof that our Government’s policies are starting to work.

[Sajid Javid]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend.

If we want to make the cuts less painful, that is possible. This does not all have to be about losing jobs. I noticed yesterday that local councils are still advertising for walking co-ordinators, obesity strategy officers, cycling officers and energy island administrators. If the public sector wants to make the cuts less painful, it has the power to do so.

Hon. Members talk about the unfairness of the cuts, but let us look at some of the changes that the Government have boldly introduced. We have put a cap on the amount of benefit that people can claim at the equivalent of about a £35,000 gross salary. What is unfair about that? Why should a family on benefits receive more than the average working family receives in salary? We have put a cap on housing benefit to ensure that claimants cannot live in better accommodation than ordinary, hard-working families. We recently suggested a cap on how much someone living in social housing can earn. There are Opposition Members who are earning a household income of more than £100,000 a year and who continue to live in social housing for about £175 a week. That is unacceptable and the public will find it unacceptable too.

The Chancellor asked why the Opposition do not have a policy on public sector pensions. I suggest that one reason is that the leader of the Labour party was elected and put in place by the trade unions and that many Labour Members get the majority of their funding from trade unions. I would therefore expect nothing else from them.

What alternatives do we have? That question brings me back to economic illiteracy. The shadow Chancellor seems to think that we can force the bond markets to buy our bonds. He seems to think that despite this country being forced to issue £4 billion in bonds a week—that is the amount we borrow plus the amount we have to refinance—and despite the competitive nature of the bond market, bond investors will just purchase our bonds willy-nilly. That is unacceptable economic illiteracy. The truth is that bond investors have a choice. Because of that, we are stranded and have no choice but to deal with the deficit.

In my last two minutes, let us look at the countries that have failed to take action. I have already mentioned the United States, which had huge quantitative easing programmes of $600 billion and $1.7 trillion. It has reached the ceiling on its debt cap and is in serious trouble. It will shortly have to follow similar plans to ours. The shadow Chancellor mentioned the eurozone. He was right to point out the problems in Greece, but wrong to suggest that he has never supported membership of the euro. It is the policy of the Labour party to join the euro, and its last manifesto offered a referendum on the euro. The problem with the euro was created by political dishonesty. Politicians in Europe were not willing to tell the truth about the euro and say that there could not be a single currency without fiscal union.

I suggest that there is similar political dishonesty from the Labour party. It is a party that, like Alice, lives in Wonderland. It believes that one can keep spending without any consequences and that one can abolish boom and bust.