150th Open Championship

Jeff Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2022 Westminster Hall

[Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) on securing the debate. She gave a really interesting speech about Scotland’s proud golfing history and the importance of golf in her constituency. I would never have imagined the link between Jack Nicklaus and Benjamin Franklin—I will know that for future pub quizzes.

When we think about the great British sporting events, we think about Wimbledon, the FA cup final, the grand national, the Ashes and the Open—especially the Open at St Andrews, the home of golf. We look forward to this weekend’s 150th edition of arguably the world’s greatest golf tournament.

Research estimates that last year’s 149th Open at Royal St George’s brought a £113 million economic boost to Kent, the host county. Kent also gained an additional £94 million in gross advertising revenue thanks to the thousands of hours of global television coverage, traditional TV and online news coverage, digital streaming and social media content. That is in a year hit by covid challenges, so the Open is a real economic opportunity.

This year, we are set to have the highest attendance yet, so the Open could be even more of an economic boost for Fife. A record-breaking 290,000 fans are expected to attend, and the R&A says it received more than 1.3 million requests for tickets. Hosting such an event is fantastic for an area, bringing thousands of people to spend their money while enjoying the scenery, cafes, pubs, restaurants, arts and crafts, and independent shops.

St Andrews is a seaside town with a population of under 20,000, and it is expecting 250,000 visitors. Even if the trains were running smoothly, accommodating that number of people is always a challenge, but the Scottish National party’s ScotRail cuts and the temporary timetable have caused real problems on Scotland’s trains in recent months. A pay deal may have been agreed, but that may well have come too late for some of the thousands of visitors heading to St Andrews this weekend.

I echo the plea of the hon. Member for North East Fife for people to go early and use the park and ride. That is sensible advice for visitors. A ScotRail spokesman has said that the operator expects to run a quarter of the trains that it had planned for the Open, and the R&A has warned that fans who travel to the Open by train may find that there are no services to get them home. That it is a real worry. The lack of trains is likely to lead to thousands of fans filling the roads, and we hope it does not lead to problematic congestion for local residents. The problems on the trains have certainly hit businesses, tourist destinations and passengers for weeks, and the Government really need to get the basics right.

The last couple of years have been difficult for businesses, especially those such as golf that rely heavily on inbound visitors. Pre-pandemic, Scotland attracted around 17.5 million overnight visitors every year, which generated £5.9 billion in visitor spend, and an additional 134 million day trips were taken, with visitors spending £5.8 billion. In Scotland, spending by tourists generates around £12 billion of economic activity for the wider tourism supply chain and contributes around £6 billion—about 5%—to Scottish GDP.

Office for National Statistics figures suggest that accommodation and food services—the services most strongly linked to tourism—were affected worse in Scotland than in any other of the four nations by the pandemic restrictions. Even now, with the majority of restrictions lifted, a recent survey by the Scottish Tourism Alliance found that half of businesses have fewer bookings than normal for the summer period, compared with the same timeframe in 2019, and 40% reported a fall in spend since May 2021. The recovery is difficult and slow.

Scottish Labour has called for a new national plan for tourism to build a sustainable recovery and ensure that key tourist destinations have the infrastructure and investment to support demand. Scotland’s tourism sector can at least be happy that the Scottish Government are investing more generously in it than the UK Government are in English tourism. A recent Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee oral evidence session revealed that the finances devolved to VisitScotland are, in relative terms, something like six or seven times the core funding available to VisitEngland.

As a United Kingdom, our sporting culture is one of the biggest draws for visitors. In 2017, more than 2 million visitors went to a live sport event as part of their trip to the UK, which is 6% of all visits that year; more than 350,000 inbound visitors played golf during their trip to the UK, spending about £418 million; and 18,000 international visitors watched a live golf event during their stay, spending at least £30 million. Scottish tourism is still on a shaky road to recovery but, after a difficult few years, golf appears to be on the up and can play a key role in driving that tourism. As we know, when people come to play golf, it is not just the golf courses that profit but the tour operators, local accommodation, local restaurants, pubs and bars, taxi drivers, golf equipment shops, and everybody in the various supply chains.

Importantly, the nature of golf means that it is played in wide open spaces and is often naturally socially distanced. Back in the days when I used to hack around the public courses in Manchester, I was always socially distanced from my fellow players—and from the fairway. That aspect of the sport means that many people have been able to enjoy it as a form of entertainment and exercise with a low covid risk. In most places, golf courses reopened sooner than other sports facilities after the covid restrictions ended.

The rise of the sport’s profile appears to have further boosted participation. A survey of 99 UK golf clubs found that four in five members’ clubs and nine in 10 proprietary venues reported growth last year. According to research by the R&A and Sports Marketing Surveys, the total number of people who played a round of golf in the British Isles nearly doubled from 2.9 million in 2019 to 5.2 million in 2020. It is also fantastic that women are increasingly embracing the sport. The number of women players grew from just over 400,000 in 2019 to 1.46 million—28% of all golfers—in 2020. There is still a long way to go, but professional women’s golf is also enjoying a significant rise.

Meanwhile, the first Disabled Golf Week will take place across Scotland this year to coincide with the 150th Open at St Andrews. Organised by Scottish Disability Golf and Curling, the programme of events will aim to introduce people of all ages, with any kind of disability or serious health issue, to golf with training and tuition. It is good to see golf taking those strides towards greater accessibility and inclusion to enrich the sport further. Not only is the 150th Open championship set to provide a fantastic sporting event and a cultural and economic boost to Fife, Scotland and the rest of the UK, but it will help to inspire a diverse range of people to pick up a club—perhaps for the first time—and to get more physically active.

Last week, a report by the National Audit Office concluded that the Government had essentially squandered much of the legacy of the 2012 Olympics by failing to make meaningful inroads in boosting people’s physical activity levels. Let us hope that the legacy of the 150th Open championship has a different fate and that the event inspires people to get involved in sport and physical activity. Let us also hope for a fantastic few days of golf ahead of us.