Tourism: Covid-19

Peter Aldous Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Huddleston]

My hon. Friend makes some important points, and I am happy to continue the dialogue outside the Chamber, where he can call me anything he likes.

The Government have put in place a number of measures and will of course continue to monitor the situation. In July, as lockdown restrictions began to ease, we wanted to ensure that tourism businesses were in the best position as they began to open. We therefore implemented a whole range of additional measures, such as the VAT cut for tourism, eat out to help out, the Enjoy Summer Safely campaign, the work that VisitBritain has done and its “We’re good to go” standard, and of course changing regulations to allow bars, pubs and restaurants to extend on to the pavement and into the street, given the capacity challenges.

The additional arts and culture support package, which my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) mentioned, is vital to sustain the economy through the support it has given to heritage venues, theatres, museums, galleries and other draws for our tourism economy. Taken together, these measures have helped the tourism sector to reopen and start on the road to recovery, but there is much more to do.

[Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)]

To fuel that road to recovery, will the Minister give favourable consideration to Visit East of England’s bid for Suffolk and Norfolk to be a tourism zone?