Tourism

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 24th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, when you are starting to talk about tourism and you have only one minute and 45 seconds left, you think it is best to concentrate on one thing.

The thing I would like us to have a look at is the provision of service in this country. It is something we do not do that well traditionally, and we have improved of late largely through foreign labour. If we are going to get the best out of our tourism capacity, we have to make sure that those who come here or are travelling around have a nice time, to put it bluntly, and make sure that there are staff who are going to look after you properly. Okay, it is great to be polite and everything else, but what emphasis are we placing on the training of staff to deliver properly? There is no doubt about it that a culture of training and looking at maintaining staff in the catering sector and other sectors helps.

We are a northern European country with a lot of history in it. We are not alone; the rest of northern Europe has that. We have cities of interesting and historical aspect, blah blah blah, and so on; London does very well. We do well when we make sure that those institutions are presented well to the public. I hope that the Government will give us some guidance on exactly how they are going to make sure that local people are better trained and attracted more to staying in this world. If they are not, we are simply going to be dependent on foreign labour, and there will be a cycle of not having the highest standards we want, not guaranteeing what we have got and not controlling. We need to know what we are doing here by having our own people trained. Without them, we are losing the benefit of having that local feel that can make the experience even more memorable. It is only one part of this but, please, can we look after the people who look after the tourists?