Tourism: Bedfordshire

Roger Gale Excerpts

Tuesday 19th November 2024 Westminster Hall

[Blake Stephenson]

I could not resist it.

Bedfordshire is a beautiful, historic place to live and spend time in. We are fortunate to have some absolutely fantastic local hospitality, leisure and tourism businesses. As its Member of Parliament, I am determined to put Mid Bedfordshire on the map as a place for people to visit.

If the Government are serious about their growth agenda, Bedfordshire represents a real opportunity. Unlocking Universal, delivering the waterway park and ensuring that we have the right promotion in place to take advantage of the opportunities presented by East West Rail and Luton airport would turbocharge our economy.

I hope the Minister will work with us to deliver this agenda. I would welcome him to Mid Bedfordshire to show him the opportunities and some of our beautiful attractions first hand.

[Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)]

I am pleased to be able to offer my Jurassic chairmanship. I call Sir Chris Bryant.

[The Minister for Creative Industries, Arts and Tourism (Chris Bryant)]

Sir Roger, you are not Jurassic. You are a mere slip of a boy, in parliamentary terms anyway.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Blake Stephenson) on securing this debate. I think one of his first parliamentary questions was on this subject. He is obviously very determined to make sure that tourism and the expansion of the tourism offer in his constituency is a key part of securing economic development in his area. I guarantee that if he comes up with any good ideas that we can steal off him, we will be like the proverbial magpie—we will pick it up and run with it. If he ever wants to have a meeting with officials in my Department to discuss specific issues around tourism in Mid Bedfordshire—perhaps we might do that with all the Bedfordshire MPs—I would be more than happy to arrange that.

It is good to have an MP called Blake. The hon. Member might be the first MP in the history of Parliament to be called Blake. I noted the other day that “Blake’s 7” is back—Sir Roger, you can probably remember “Blake’s 7”.

[Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)]

I am afraid I do not.

[Chris Bryant]

You can remember some things still, Sir Roger. By the time “Blake’s 7” ended, it did not have seven people in it, and it did not have a character called Blake in it, which was a bit rum.

I agreed above all with a point that the hon. Member made in his very first paragraph. He talked about Bedfordshire not just being a place that people pass through. I am very conscious of that. My brother lives in St Albans and I am endlessly getting on trains that say the final destination is Bedford, but I never go to Bedford, because I get off at St Albans.

There is a key aspect to what we need to achieve in our tourism and visitor economy strategy over the next few years. It is all very well people coming for a day or half a day and going out with the kids or whatever, but we need to make sure that there is the right kind of accommodation and accommodation mix at different price points in a whole series of different places around the country. Matching the accommodation with the needs and desires of both domestic and international tourists is a key part of what we need to secure in our tourism strategy.

The hon. Member gave us the Cook’s tour, but when he was talking about Wrest Park, which is run by English Heritage, he did not mention that 194,693 people visited in 2023. It has a great Narnia event, which starts, I think, next week or at the end of this week, and that is why parts of it are closed at the moment. He also referred to Houghton House, Woburn Abbey and the safari park. Some 489,751 people visited the safari park, and that was in 2015, so it is likely that the numbers have gone up since then.

The hon. Member focused on what is in his constituency, but we should look at the whole county—of course, tourists and visitors do not say, “I wonder whose constituency I am going to visit today”; they think about the whole offer in an area, including transport links and whether they will be able to park. One of my ambitions in life is to have one parking app for the whole United Kingdom, so that people do not have to use a phone to download a new app every time they go to park somewhere. It is especially irritating when the local council has just changed the app to another app, and people cannot remember the passcode and all the rest of it. Those are the aspects of someone’s journey—every bit, end to end—that we need to think about when we try to create an effective tourism strategy for the United Kingdom.

I would add to the hon. Member’s list the John Bunyan museum in Bedford and, for that matter, the Panacea museum. That is something that politicians have been seeking forever: if only there were a panacea that could cure all ills—although the danger with a panacea is that it is a mirage, and does not really offer what it proposes.

Let me talk about some of the things we are already doing for the visitor economy across the whole United Kingdom. From representations that were made to me immediately after the Government came into office in July, I know that a lot of people in the visitor economy and hospitality industry were particularly worried about the cliff edge that they saw coming at the end of this year in relation to business rates. I am glad that we could take forward the 40% relief. I know that it is not 70%, but placing it on a permanent footing is important, because it allows hospitality businesses to make investments for the future and have a secure financial footing.

One issue in Bedfordshire and many other parts of the country is short-term lets, whether through Airbnb, individual people renting out a room or whatever it may be. In areas with heavy concentrations of visitors at particular times of the year, the art is to come up with a scheme so that we get the benefits of the visitor economy—all the footfall and added money that that brings to a local area—without the danger of ending up with a completely vacated town or village when the tourism period has ended. That is why, following the previous Government’s legislation on short-term lets, we will soon consult on precisely how to implement the legislation, so that we can, at the very least, have a clear understanding of what short-term lets there are across the whole country and then, if necessary, take further action.

The hon. Member rightly referred to local visitor economy partnerships and the fact that there is not one in Bedfordshire at the moment. That is an issue of concern. As he knows, the local visitor economy partnership programme was part of a new vision for England’s tourism management landscape and was recommended by the independent destination management organisations review. In February 2023, VisitEngland launched the LVEP accreditation programme, which will continue through 2024-25 and which seeks to accredit high-performing, strategic and financially resilient organisations that can lead visitor economy development in their areas, working with businesses and local authorities. As I understand it, VisitEngland is working closely with Experience Bedfordshire and other local stakeholders in Bedfordshire to support their progress in building capacity and moving towards local visitor economy partnership status. Over the coming months, I will ensure that I keep in touch with my officials about how that progresses. I am sure that if it does not progress to the hon. Member’s satisfaction, he will call for another of these debates and I will have to answer to him.

In the Budget, the Chancellor confirmed the Government’s support to deliver the East West Rail scheme in full, which is good news; the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire referred to it. It will strengthen the region’s thriving life science, technology and innovation sectors, but it will also facilitate journeys for tourists and locals throughout the Bedford area. East West Rail is set to bring billions of pounds-worth of growth to the Oxford-Cambridge region, along with tens of thousands of new homes and jobs. I note that the hon. Member was not quite so happy about the tens of thousands of new homes. For what it is worth, my personal view is that the most important thing when developing large numbers of new homes, which we all know this country needs, is to ensure that we have all the infrastructure to be able to cope with them. If there is going to be a significant expansion of the tourism industry, or the visitor economy industry in Bedfordshire, the people who are going to work in that industry will need houses to live in. All those things have to come together.

The hon. Member referred to the prospect of a major development with Universal UK, which is a new theme park. Obviously, I cannot enter into the specifics of the ongoing discussions—that would be unhelpful to everybody —but I am hopeful that we will get to the significant and dramatic change that it would make, not only to visitor numbers in Bedfordshire but to the whole of the United Kingdom.

That takes me to my final point. Of course we should be ambitious for the whole of the United Kingdom in our tourism strategy, but it would be counterproductive if every single person who came from overseas to this country—and we still do not have the numbers that we reached before covid—decided that they were going to visit only London and did not even get to Bedfordshire, let alone farther-flung parts of the United Kingdom. That is why, in all the work we do on behalf of VisitBritain and VisitEngland, we need to ensure that our tourism strategy is genuinely sustainable. It should take people to see not just the historic sites in the capital city of London, or, for that matter, Bath, Stratford, Oxford, Cambridge or Edinburgh, but the full diversity of what we have to offer in this country.

We are a country with extraordinary things to see. There are enormous adventures to take part in across the whole country. The hon. Member has highlighted some of those in his own constituency. I am keen to ensure that many more people come to the United Kingdom, including Bedfordshire, and, as he said, they do not just pass through but stay the night.

Question put and agreed to.