Cruise Industry

Jackie Doyle-Price Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd September 2021 Westminster Hall

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Mr Efford, and a great pleasure to contribute to the debate, ably moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Royston Smith). I do so as the chairman of the all-party parliamentary maritime and ports group, but also as a Member of Parliament for Thurrock and particularly the port of Tilbury, which is home to the London cruise terminal. I will happily concede to my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) and my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen that Southampton is, indeed, the capital of cruising. However, by the same circumstance, Thurrock is the ports capital of the UK. It is only natural that cruising forms part of that.

We have heard already this morning about the difficulties faced by the industry during the pandemic and I want to pay tribute to its stoicism when grappling with the issues caused by the pandemic. Dare I say that its behaviour contrasts rather favourably with that of the aviation sector, which has been loud and noisy about the challenges it has faced? Fair enough, but the fact that the cruise industry has not been as vocal about the difficulties that it has faced does not make them any less difficult.

As we have heard, the industry stopped sailing in March 2020. The skyline in Tilbury was transformed, because we were home to seven ships that should have been sailing the high seas but were permanently docked there. That included two ships owned by Saga, one of which had yet to take its maiden voyage. It was a challenging time but we were pleased to host them. However, it is fantastic news that we finally have the cruise sector sailing again and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Minister for his real efforts to achieve that.

I have been in debates about the industry. Only last week, we talked about how the silo culture in Government often means that the sector does not get the support it necessarily deserves. That has been particularly true in this regard. We have had the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Transport all having an influence on whether the industry could sail.

Although the Department for Transport has been an extremely effective and enthusiastic champion of the sector, unfortunately the decision making about whether sailing could take place really rested with the Department of Health and Social Care and the question of whether it was safe. We have already heard that cruising is perhaps the safest method of travel. In fact, we know that the industry has made great investments to make it so, reducing capacity to enable social distancing on ships and so on. The medical facilities are also second to none. Obviously, the Department of Health and Social Care and the chief medical officer have the objective of disease control, and they took a risk-averse approach to whether the sector could get going.

The most difficult thing was the travel advice issued by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, which treated our cruise ships not as a mode of travel but as a destination. It was pretty unfair to do so given that, as we have heard, they are a safe method of travel. In terms of the destinations that a cruise ship will visit, the amazing thing about ships is that they are very flexible, and if a destination suddenly becomes red, they can go somewhere else.

At last common sense has prevailed. I hope the Minister and the Department for Transport can reconfigure their relationships with the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and the Department of Health and Social Care, so that the situation the sector faced is not repeated. In August 2020, the industry showed the Minister’s predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood (Kelly Tolhurst), the safety measures that were being put in place across the industry, and nobody could have doubted the effort being taken and the safety they would generate. Alas, it took a long time to persuade everyone else, but lessons have been learned.

The difficulties that the sector has faced have led to some cruise companies going, and a number of vessels have been scrapped, but the industry’s optimism is striking and inspirational, given the difficulties it has faced. Just this weekend, the Disney cruise ship left from Tilbury, which was great to see. Lots of children went to wave it off, because it was accompanied by lots of Disney tunes, which was lovely. I am pleased that, at last, the Spirit of Adventure has commenced its maiden voyage and is currently sailing around Scotland.

I am pleased that we have had this opportunity to pay tribute to this fantastic sector, which is much neglected. I hope that we shall continue to celebrate its contributions in the future.