Cruise Industry

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd September 2021 Westminster Hall

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Royston Smith) on securing this debate.

In recent years, the cruise industry has become one of the most important and, occasionally, controversial parts of the visitor economy in the Northern Isles. I suspect we are not the only community around the coastline to find ourselves in that position. The industry has grown over the years, starting with just a few ships and gradually growing to more and bigger ships. As a consequence, we have lacked a strategic approach to the development of that particular part of the visitor economy. It is nobody’s fault, but it is a little like the frog in water that just gets warmer—eventually, we realise that there is a severe impact. A good number of local businesses in Orkney and Shetland are now highly dependent on cruise traffic. There are also a number of self-employed tour guides who have grown an industry that simply was not there before. They have certainly missed cruise traffic; its return will be important.

In all things we should try to find the positive from the negative. The absence of cruise ships since March 2020 and the beginning of their slow return is something that we should take opportunity from. I would like my communities to take a much more strategic approach to engaging with the industry, and, by the same token, I would like to see better engagement from the industry with my communities. In the past, the larger operators would often say “These are our terms of business; people can either take them or leave them. If they do not want them, we will not come to their communities.” I hope that as those operators rebuild and as we rebuild our relationship with them, we may be able to see that done rather differently.

There are real opportunities for some of the most economically fragile communities in the Northern Isles: places such as Fair Isle, which has a population of about 60 people. A small cruise boat coming into dock there can have a tremendous impact and can be a real opportunity. However, again, to get the maximum benefit from a visit from a cruise ship, communities like that will require a bit of support from outside agencies. Local councils, VisitScotland, the local economic development agencies, the Scottish Government and the UK Government should all be pulling together to find a new strategic approach that will allow every community in the country that engages with the industry to do so in a better, more strategic way. That way, the very different needs and opportunities that will go to a place such as Greenock or Southampton are not ones that will operate to the disadvantage of communities such as mine.

There are all sorts of opportunities from the industry, but we have to accept that there is a diversity of opportunities and all need to be accommodated. This is the point at which we can reboot that relationship, and I hope Governments and other public agencies, the industry and communities can all work together to do exactly that.

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[Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)]

Thank you very much for your excellent chairing of this debate, Mr Efford. I thank the hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Royston Smith) for securing the debate.

I think my colleagues from Scotland, the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) and my hon. Friend the Member for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan) missed a trick: they did not talk about their UNESCO world heritage sites, nor did they talk about the quality of their coffee, which I am sure is truly wonderful, in Orkney and Shetland and in Inverclyde—as well as in Aberdeen, of course.

I also did not expect that we would be talking about Disney songs, so I will hold myself back from bursting into song. I could not think of an appropriate maritime song to sing, but I am sure my children will correct me later and tell me I have missed one—probably from “Moana” or “The Little Mermaid”.

Rather than focusing on covid, I want to talk and think about pre-covid and post-covid, what the cruise industry will look like and the benefits it will have for our communities. It is undoubtedly a massive success story. Between 2014 and 2019 we saw 90% growth in cruise ship calls and passenger numbers in Scotland. That is a staggering increase, and it shows the increase not only in the popularity of cruise ships, but in the ability of Scottish ports to take those cruise ships in and of Scottish communities to ensure that we provide the best possible services.

In Scotland, the cruise industry supports more than 800 employees and generates around £23 million gross value added for the Scottish economy. It also extends the tourism season in Orkney and Shetland. However, the key thing for me and for the SNP is that sustainable cruise tourism development must be the overarching requirement. I appreciate the different situation that Southampton and even Inverclyde find themselves in, in that they are cruise ports and less destinations—I am sure Inverclyde is a destination and so is Southampton, but they are involved in servicing the industry more than, say, Orkney and Shetland.

We need to ensure that the tourism that we see from cruise ships and cruise passengers benefits those local economies, and that local economies see the plus points of that. We have seen issues around Scotland with things such as the North Coast 500, which is excellent but has brought problems as well as positive benefits to those areas. We must ensure that we strike that balance for local communities.

Cruise ship stays make up 15% of overnight tourism volume in the highlands and islands, but they represent a much lower percentage of the overnight tourism spend there. I understand that that is the nature of cruising; that is how it works. However, we cannot see a race to the bottom between Scottish or British ports trying to allow cruise ships to come as cheaply as possible, without people visiting their local areas. We must see the benefit to those local areas. Although having cruise passengers on an island or in a community in Scotland is a great thing, it can also be unsettling for the residents and that local services are more stretched as a result. We need to make sure that balance is struck.

The harbour in Aberdeen is split between my constituency, Aberdeen North, and Aberdeen South. A new harbour is being built in Aberdeen South that will be able to accommodate 300 metre vessels with a maximum 10.5 metre draught. Before that was being built in my city, I did not know a huge amount about the cruise industry or how it worked for local communities. I continue to be concerned that areas around the new harbour in Aberdeen—among of the more deprived communities in the city—will not gain from the new harbour and cruise ships in the way that I would like them to, given what they have had to give up for it to be built, with the number of road closures and work that has been going on. I would like to see those communities benefit.

My hon. Friend the Member for Inverclyde mentioned the culture quarter, and we need to support local communities in doing that, to ensure that cruise ship visitors can spend money in the local area. That is what we need to see: the economic benefit coming to those areas as a result.

[Mr Carmichael]

The hon. Lady touches on something very important. The capacity for cruise ship passengers to spend money when in port is very often determined by the terms of the contract that they have with the cruise ship. That is why I say that in rebuilding the industry and looking at the impact it has on different parts of the country, we need that sense of partnership. We need our communities to be talking and to be able to influence the ships, as well as the other way around.

[Kirsty Blackman]

I absolutely agree, and I thought that the right hon. Gentleman’s speech was very thoughtful on that matter. He has really thought about the needs of his community. That is why I stressed that we must not have a race to the bottom. We do not want our ports fighting over who can give the cheapest terms because that will only hurt our communities; it will mean that our communities do not see the benefit. It would be much more positive if they worked together, both as local communities and in a more overarching strategic way, as he said.

It is really unfortunate that we have not had much co-operation between the UK and Scottish Governments on green ports, in particular when we have been clear about the key things that we want: a focus on net zero and a focus on the real living wage. It is completely reasonable to say that people working in and around green ports, cruise ports or any other kind of port should be paid the real living wage. One of the biggest concerns that I hear, in particular on—slightly off topic—oil and gas supply vessels, is that people are not paid appropriately because they are on tickets from other countries and therefore they are paid less.

We need to make sure that we bear down—I do not like that phrase—on that and reduce the number of people not being paid a wage that they can live on. We need to ensure that we have laws and rules to fix that problem in a maritime way, and that the people working in ports are paid the real living wage, not the national living wage. It is such an important industry, and it is one that will continue to grow. We need to make sure that we see the benefits for the people working directly in the industry and for the communities seeing the visits.

People travelling on cruise ships get to visit some of the most inaccessible places across the UK—no offence to the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland. They get to visit places that cannot be reached by hopping on a bike or a train. It is really important that the people who are travelling on these ships and the cruise companies recognise that these communities are fairly rural and cannot necessarily deal with that influx without support. This is a really positive industry; it is a massive success story, particularly for Scotland and its more rural communities. I would like to see it continue to grow, but we probably need to work more with local communities to ensure that they see its benefits.