Sharing Economy: Short-term Letting

Debate between Jeff Smith and Natalie Elphicke

Thursday 16th June 2022 Commons Chamber

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

I congratulate the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) on securing the debate and on her opening speech, which set out the issues really well. We have also had excellent speeches from my hon. Friends the Members for York Central (Rachael Maskell) and for Westminster North (Ms Buck). What has been noticeable, as we have just heard, is the consensus here. We may be small in number, but we all recognise the issue and we all recognise that it needs to be tackled. The fact that there are not many people in the Chamber may be because it is not a controversial proposal.

Britain is a fantastic country, with a wealth of exciting places to visit: our remarkable cultural heritage; our world-class attractions and events; our incredible scenery; our coastal towns and vibrant cities, and our amazing capital city. But the tourism sector has really suffered as a result of the pandemic, and its recovery has been much slower than other sectors. VisitBritain found that the UK’s tourism sector lost a total of £146 billion over 2020 and 2021—around £200 million per day.

The tourism sector in the UK is recovering at a slower rate than that in Europe and the USA. We have tourism recovery plan targets and a review of destination management organisations gathering dust on the shelf. Despite that, we know that we will recover. People are already returning to big events. In Manchester, last week, we had one of our biggest weekends ever, with lots of huge events around the city, with hotel rooms packed, bars packed, and Airbnbs packed. The inbound tourist trade is picking up as well. Domestic or tourist visitors want somewhere affordable and convenient to stay. Short-term lets have helped many people to do this, encouraging people to holiday domestically in the UK and housing people from abroad. That is generally good, notwithstanding the difficulties for some hotel operators that were identified by the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard). We want those holidays, those visits and those day trips to continue and to grow.

However, short-term letting is only a good thing if it is sustainable and strengthens, rather than weakens, communities. As we have heard today, in many places, housing supply, local services, safety and wellbeing are affected by the trend towards short-term lets. Properly managed, short-term lets can have real benefits: they can increase housing options, especially at peak times —I have used Airbnb for Labour party conference accommodation, so I know how it can add capacity when all the hotels are packed out for conferences—they can ensure that empty rooms can be used efficiently and they give people an opportunity to make a little extra money.

A residential property that is being used for Airbnb, however—I use Airbnb as a kind of shorthand, but it is the clearly the market leader in this area—can cause the kinds of issues for residents that we have heard articulated so well today, and can take that property out of the residential housing market.

[Mrs Natalie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman mentions Airbnb. In the town of Deal, which I represent, there is a particular problem of Airbnbs that are not registered. Does he agree that having a registration system for Airbnbs would be a sensible move to protect coastal communities and tourism in areas such as mine?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I was hugely generous, and so was the Front-Bench spokesman, in allowing that intervention, for obvious reasons.