Tourism in Yorkshire

Neil Carmichael Excerpts

Tuesday 13th September 2011 Westminster Hall

[Nigel Adams]

I appreciated that intervention, despite its length. I echo what my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland) said about pubs—I am a fellow member of the all-party save the pub group. The point that he made is incredibly important.

Not only is this country well worth a visit, but the tourism industry is vital to our economy, and the 200,000 businesses directly involved are key contributors to Britain’s economic recovery. They provide £52 billion of our gross domestic product and 4.4% of our jobs, and they have contributed to making tourism one of the fastest growing sectors, providing employment in our most rural communities and enjoyment to millions. The industry accounts for almost £90 billion in direct spending each year and, equally importantly, it rises above north-south or regional divides and creates wealth and employment in all parts of the country. It remains a fantastic, cost-effective way to rebalance the fortunes of the country away from past reliance on financial services, construction and the south-east.

I turn to tourism in Yorkshire. As I am sure we are all aware, Yorkshire is England’s largest county, with a population of 5.5 million—equal to that of Scotland and twice that of Wales. Tourism is the county’s third largest industry and continues to support a quarter of a million jobs and more than 25,000 businesses, many of which are in rural and coastal areas that depend solely on visitors for their livelihoods. I am pleased to see Members representing coastal areas in the Chamber today.

All my Yorkshire colleagues present today are well acquainted with the county’s official destination management organisation, which is called Welcome to Yorkshire. I am delighted to see the senior management team of Welcome to Yorkshire, who are—by sheer coincidence—in the Chamber today. The organisation is widely heralded as a national success story that has transformed the UK tourism landscape. I confess to being, in a previous life, a director of its predecessor, the Yorkshire Tourist Board. What now exists is a completely different beast; Welcome to Yorkshire is doing a fantastic job.

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

Yesterday, I launched the Stroud special train, which is designed to pick people up from Paddington and take them to Stroud and, obviously, Gloucestershire. The train will run every day, with cheap tickets and advice on what people can and should do once they reach their destination. It seems to have caught the imagination of people in Stroud and the rest of Gloucestershire. Does my hon. Friend think that that kind of thing should be done for Yorkshire? Can he not imagine trains going from King’s Cross to Yorkshire, with the same sort of promotion, tickets and, effectively, navigation of people to the right place?

[Nigel Adams]

That is an excellent example. Yorkshire is fortunate to have a good railway service to and from London, but I am sure that the railways Minister might be interested in a similar proposal that involves taking advantage of the high-speed rail network in a few years’ time—such a train could be up in Yorkshire within several minutes, I imagine. The Stroud train is a great initiative and, although we are well served in Yorkshire, it is certainly something we could take on board.

Since Welcome to Yorkshire was launched in 2009, the value of Yorkshire’s tourism has increased from £5.9 billion to £7 billion, adding more than £1 billion to the economy. Its role is to change perceptions of Yorkshire, by projecting a new, dynamic and vibrant county sitting alongside its tradition, history and natural beauty. The Welcome to Yorkshire gates at King’s Cross station fill me with great pride every Monday morning when I arrive in London, reminding everyone that they would surely rather be spending their time in Yorkshire than London.

It goes without saying that Yorkshire is awash with tourism assets, which are the envy of the nation. I do not mean to upset any of my Yorkshire colleagues, but I am sure that they will allow me to mention a handful and that they will put me right if I miss a few. We are lucky enough to host, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr Goodwill), the world’s oldest and greatest cricket festival, at Scarborough. We have two world heritage sites, Studley Royal and Fountains abbey, and Sir Titus Salt’s vision at Saltaire.

We have some fantastic churches, abbeys, minsters and cathedrals—none finer than Selby abbey in my own constituency. The weekend before last, I visited a fantastic small church in the village of Birkin in my constituency, a Norman church which has lasted for all those centuries and is an absolute gem, and a great potential tourist destination. Hopefully, it will not be blighted by the proposed wind farm adjacent to it.

Other great examples of what we have in Yorkshire are UNESCO’s first and only world city of film, Bradford, and six national museums. Yorkshire is arguably the food larder of Europe, and we have 190 independent breweries, which many of us are doing our best to ensure that we visit in the course of this Parliament. We have the seventh most visited attraction in the UK in Flamingo Land. We have more blue plaque awards for quality beaches than any other county, and the world’s No. 1 heritage railway—North Yorkshire Moors railway—which was featured in ITV’s “Heartbeat” and in Harry Potter movies. I could go on.

Our destination management organisation has revolutionised the approach of the UK’s tourism industry as a whole by raising standards and redefining the role of traditional tourist agencies. Its return on investment is impressive, with £40 delivered to the local economy for every £1 invested in the organisation, £18 of which goes back to the Treasury in tax receipts. There is not much not to like about that; it is a great return on investment.

The tourism policy’s aim is to attract greater numbers of visitors over the next four years, and Welcome to Yorkshire has become an innovative international ambassador, tirelessly promoting Britain and, of course, Yorkshire, as leading tourism destinations. It has even been suggested that, within the tourism policy, Yorkshire has become an attack brand, capable of rivalling London as a super-destination for international visitors—although we do not want to stir up too much rivalry.

According to independent research from Visit England, we are succeeding in the role of encouraging more people to visit Yorkshire, to stay longer, and to spend more. In the first quarter of 2011, visits to Yorkshire were up 14% on the same period last year, compared with just a 5% increase throughout the UK as a whole. During the same period, length of stay increased by 15% in Yorkshire, compared with a 2% decrease nationally. Yorkshire also experienced a 25% growth in visitor spend, compared with just 5% for the UK, with overseas spending at 70%, compared with a 7% expenditure increase in the UK overall. In the two years since Welcome to Yorkshire was launched, 4,000 new jobs have been created in the tourism industry in Yorkshire. I have listed many figures, but they are impressive and worth mentioning.

The organisation has won numerous awards, including the world’s leading marketing campaign and Europe’s leading marketing campaign, and has been shortlisted for status as the world’s leading tourist board 2011; I believe that it is England’s only representative, and it is up against the likes of Malaysia, the Maldives and New York. We wish it well with that award. However, the progress and success of Yorkshire’s tourist industry is now at risk.

When Welcome to Yorkshire was launched, it had funding of £10 million a year for three years, but that funding stream ends on 1 April 2012. When it ceases, in just over seven months, its resources will be vastly reduced, leaving it to be funded through a cocktail of revenue streams, including strong private sector support from several thousand businesses that partner the organisation, local authorities and the newly created local enterprise partnerships.

Those new methods of funding are concurrent with the tourism policy’s stated aims for tourism bodies to be less reliant on public funds, and more locally responsive. I support that. It seems all very well, self-sufficient and in order, until one discovers that Visit Scotland received £66 million in funding in 2009-10, the majority of which came from Westminster. As I pointed out, the populations of Yorkshire and Scotland are the same, with similar sized tourism industries, employing 240,000 people in Scotland and 254,000 in Yorkshire, yet Scotland received six times more funding than Yorkshire in that financial year.

When centralised funding ceases on 1 April 2012, Visit Scotland will continue to receive funding from Westminster, but England’s largest county will receive nothing. If we are successfully to rebalance the UK economy, as we all know we must, it is clear that some central funding, not necessarily at the same level as in Scotland, is needed in England for super-destinations such as Yorkshire, which the Government have already identified. I urge the Minister to consider that in great detail.