Tourism

Lord Harrison Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Harrison (Lab)]

My Lords—

[The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)]

My Lords, at the start of Questions there is no official line to say who is next. I urge that one noble Lord give way to the other.

[Lord Harrison]

My Lords, given that tourism is an important economic industry, rather than fiddling around with existing successful structures, would the Government not be better advised to place tourism under the aegis of BIS or, at the very least, to include it in the title of the department where it currently finds itself, that of Culture, Media and Sport? Why not add tourism to the title to give it the energy that is required to treat it seriously?

[The Earl of Courtown]

My Lords, we do treat tourism extremely seriously, as was made apparent in the recent spending review. DCMS takes 1% of spending but contributes a sixth to the UK economy. We must also remember that employment in the UK tourism industry has increased from 2.66 million to 2.81 million jobs; that is almost twice the rate of non-tourist-related industries. I listened carefully to what the noble Lord said about where tourism’s natural home is, and must admit that I feel it is in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.