Tourism

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Thursday 24th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bilimoria (CB) [V]]

My Lords, the tourism industry contributes more than £120 billion to the economy. The noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, said that the government tourism plan will recover inbound visitors and spend by 2023. That is too late. The impact of the month-long delay right now on businesses operating in hard-pressed sectors, such as tourism, hospitality, leisure and live events, cannot be lost. Labour shortages are high in hospitality, which is intrinsically linked to tourism, with migrant workers returning to Europe during the pandemic.

We cannot be first on vaccines but last to reopen international travel. We saw a 75% fall in the number of air passengers travelling to and from the UK in 2020. Why are we not using mass lateral flow testing more to facilitate travel? We have become very good at making it available to businesses and to every citizen in this country, so can we use it more to facilitate safe travel? Businesses are telling the CBI, of which I am president, that, without moves to safely increase connectivity into key markets this summer,

“the government will need to consider further sector specific support”

for both companies in the travel industry and the wider supply chain. By March 2021, almost 62,000 aviation and aerospace jobs had been lost since the start of the pandemic. We can only assume that more have been lost since then, as well as in the maritime and international rail sectors.

We are competing with other countries. In Europe and the United States, key moves have been made to cover the capital costs of keeping international travel under restrictions—for example, in French airports, the €4 billion rescue package for Air France-KLM. In the United States, there was a $24 billion package under President Trump, and now $25 billion under President Biden. Germany recently created a further €1.2 billion package to support its airports. So, when international travel recovers, UK port and airport operators are likely to struggle to compete against foreign rivals with far stronger balance sheets. Does the Minister agree?