Holiday Pricing
Debate between Penny Mordaunt and George Mudie(10 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Mudie
I will catch the hon. Lady’s eye in a moment, if I may. My wife is a head teacher and has been a teacher since I married her. Every family holiday that we have taken has been at the most expensive time. We were both salaried, so we could afford it, but I understand what happens to families on the breadline or families struggling with their mortgage or short-term unemployment. If they have children and want to take a holiday—the figures show that it does not matter whether it is abroad or in this country—they will face inflated prices in the summer holiday.
We are talking about doing things for schools and how we would work out whether to give kids a week off and whether we would need regulations, but I do not know what regulations we would need to regulate prices. The Labour Government tried that in the 1960s and failed miserably. There are offshoots to the issue, because with railways, we have the choice of travelling at peak times or off-peak. The difference in prices is clear. If someone is booking a hotel in London, a Tuesday will have a different price from a weekend. That is business and supply and demand.
Penny Mordaunt
I thank both hon. Gentlemen for letting me intervene. We are all here because we know that the public are aggrieved by this issue and we want to do something to alleviate that. On the drive to attack the Department for Education, I can point to schools that have no problem exercising discretion under the regulations for members of the armed forces and all sorts of other exceptional cases. The real problem is those who do not have an exceptional case, but might have relatives living in a particular country. They might not have the choice that others have over their holiday destination. That is an issue for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. In particular, it should look at the costs of flights and whether the mark-up is reasonable.
Mr Mudie
I would not challenge the last part, but I still think that we would leave the regulators with a difficult job unless there was a specific factor—the Olympics were mentioned. We would have some difficulty. As has been suggested, we must take the issue in the round.
It is easy to criticise the people running the business, but they have to make a profit to stay afloat. If they are running below capacity in the other 46 weeks of the year, they have to even things out when they hit capacity, just to stay in business. Therefore I see some genuine difficulty in doing that.
I would like to come on to the Department for Education, because that is where I think the problem lies. I thank and congratulate the people who started the e-petition. Interestingly, the individual who is famous for starting the e-petition was not complaining about foreign holidays, but Center Parcs, in this country.