UK Tourism after the Paris Attacks

Nigel Huddleston Excerpts

Wednesday 9th December 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mr Ian Liddell-Grainger (Bridgwater and West Somerset) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered tourism in the UK after the Paris attacks.

I am very grateful for this chance to raise an issue of huge importance to my constituency and the United Kingdom. I am delighted that my good friend the Minister will respond to the debate. Everyone in the House will wish her and her family well and all peace and happiness for the future. Her forthcoming break from the political arena will be sad for the rest of us, but an absolute joy for her. I know, because I have three children, that it will also be an awful lot of hard work. If she ever fancies a change or a breath of fresh air, I can think of no better thing for her to do than to come down to Bridgwater and West Somerset and enjoy the delights of Exmoor—it is very good for young lungs.

Encouraging tourism is what this short debate is about. The industry is vital to the UK; tourism is growing faster than any other sector in the country. It employs well over 3 million people and, according to the latest figures, it earns £130 billion a year. That is 9% of the UK’s GDP. It is possible that 10 years from now, tourism will be bringing in £300 billion-worth of dollars, euros and yen every year. However, I emphasise the word “possible”. British tourism has massively upped its game in recent times. I can speak only for Somerset, but I know that down there we offer the best these days. However, there are still unpredictable risks that can undermine consumer confidence and pull the plug on prosperity overnight, which is why the appalling carnage in Paris just over three weeks ago is very relevant to the debate.

By coincidence, I spent the weekend and a lot of last week in Paris as a delegate to the international climate change conference. That long planned event involving the leaders of 147 countries was always going to be a security headache. What happened in the city on the grim night of 13 November dramatically altered the landscape. It is a massive tribute to French resilience that the climate change conference went ahead and will, I think, achieve so much.

By contrast, France has suffered badly in the aftermath of the ghastly terrorist attacks. As you know, Mr Owen, Paris is a wonderful city, but terrorism has wreaked havoc on its tourist trade. It is estimated that cancelled bookings and reduced visitor numbers have already cost the French economy about £1.5 billion. When Brussels was locked down while the police searched for the Paris terrorists, it cost that city a hefty £35 million a day in lost trade.

Fear, as we know, can be a cruel weapon. It respects no laws and undermines confidence—and, as we have seen here, it feeds on itself. Fear can all too easily stop tourists in their tracks. That is perfectly understandable: no one will want to put themselves or their family at risk when they embark on a vacation anywhere in the world. I fully appreciate that the remedy for fear is extremely hard, if not impossible, to find and is well beyond the power of any ministerial brief. We cannot expel it. We cannot legislate against it, and we cannot at the moment control it. However, we can perhaps do a little more to persuade the wider audience of potential visitors that, whatever they may have heard or read about the risks of terrorism, Britain remains open for business.

I have some relevant experience of the need to counter fear. Two years ago, a large part of my constituency began to sink under the most appalling floods for 200 years—given the events of recent days, I send my condolences to our friends in the north. The damage was horrendous. The human toll was also high: many people were forced to abandon their homes as the waters rose. It was shocking and desperately sad, so I greatly sympathise with those in Cumbria who have been similarly affected. Flooding on that scale is a nightmare. It has taken two years for those parts of Somerset to recover. It took an enormous push from Somerset’s tourism industry to persuade visitors to stay with us or book to return.

The trouble with fear is that it is easily exaggerated. People saw aerial photographs of flooded homes and assumed that the whole county was underwater. In fact, if one drove down the M5, one would hardly notice anything. Most people were going to work, going to school and generally getting on with their lives. There was food in the shops and a welcome at the local pub. Somerset did not grind to a halt, and neither will Cumbria. However, we all have to work extremely hard to get that message across.

I admit that I was slightly apprehensive when travelling to Paris the other day. Like everyone else, I had been glued to the news and shocked by what I saw. To my relief, Paris was operating normally. There were more police on the streets, obviously, but the buzzing stylish city was there; its heart was beating strongly. Parisians are already learning how to come to terms with what happened, as we did some years ago. For potential visitors, that process takes much longer.

We all know that terrorism never has respected and never will respect national boundaries. America has just suffered the San Bernardino shootings, inspired by the same twisted beliefs as were behind the Paris attacks. There was also the knife attacker on the London tube a few days ago. Those events remind us all of the risks, but the bigger the atrocity, the greater the impact on tourism—that is now a genuine danger. It would be surprising if the Paris massacre had no adverse effect on American tourists in the future. I would hazard a guess that if someone who lives in Minnesota is thinking about “seeing Europe”, as Americans do, they might well pick Rome, London, Venice or Berlin, but they will probably not pick Paris at the moment.

[Nigel Huddleston (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on initiating this debate on a very important topic. Does he agree that the data and evidence on the time taken to recover from major terrorist attacks and events such as those that he mentioned in his constituency vary—there is some inconsistency? Data on the London attacks in 2005 suggest that London recovered very quickly; in fact, there was an increase in tourist numbers in 2006. Similarly, after the Madrid bombings, domestic and international tourism recovered quite quickly. Unfortunately, I am hearing evidence from UKinbound and others that—

[Albert Owen (in the Chair)]

Order. I call Ian Liddell-Grainger.