Tourism

Lord Harrison Excerpts

Wednesday 14th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shutt of Greetland]

My Lords, I have been trying to find out whether time is devolved: I am told that it is not. Nevertheless, it is important, and one can see the situation of transport and changing the clock at Berwick and Carlisle, with all that that would mean. It is my view—and there have been interesting noises coming from coalition Ministers, including the Minister for Tourism, John Penrose, in the other place—that this is very much on the agenda as far as this department is concerned. However, the lead department is the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and this will be something for government as a whole to consider. It may well be that a campaign is a useful thing that could occur.

[Lord Harrison]

In the interests of the tourism industry, is it not time that tourism was added to the title of the department? Secondly, has the Minister made any calculation of the adverse effect of increasing VAT to 20 per cent on all the entrepreneurs in the tourism industry?

[Lord Shutt of Greetland]

That is a bit wide of the Question. What it means is that if bed and breakfast is £58.75, it will become £60 after 3 January: that is what the rise in VAT means. As to whether tourism should be in the title of the department, of course we can have lengthy titles—perhaps “Olympics” is half way in the title as well, so there could be a “T” and an “O” in the title as well. I will take it back to the department. It is clearly a very important part of what DCMS is about.