Aviation, Travel and Tourism Industries

Tulip Siddiq Excerpts

Thursday 10th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab) [V]]

Today, I want to focus on a specialist sailing holiday company in my constituency, which has been running for several decades and has essentially been unable to run its business since March last year. It told me that, with the current travel restrictions, it is losing £1 million in revenue every three weeks. This tour operator has not been able to access much of the Government’s support, including business rates relief. It also missed out on some council grants because it is classed as offices, which were not officially told to close.

To add insult to injury, the company is now facing repayments for a loan under the coronavirus business interruption loan scheme from the end of this month, at a time when it is still almost completely unable to trade. These companies have not even been able to take full advantage of the furlough scheme given that cancelling holidays, which so many have been forced to do, takes more work than arranging them in the first place and therefore staff have been needed to deal with disappointed holidaymakers.

Then there is the absolute shambles that is this Government’s approach to international travel, which is compounding travel companies’ problems. When I asked the Transport Secretary to publish the evidence behind the decisions on the travel ban list, I was told:

“The advice, evidence and methodology which inform these decisions relates to on-going development of Government policy and therefore cannot be published at this time.”

If that is frustrating for me, can Members imagine how frustrated travel agencies are given that the future of their business and livelihoods is based on decisions for which there is no publicly available criteria and, in many cases, very little logic? This leaves businesses such as my local tour operator unable to plan in advance on the basis of coronavirus data and hugely damages consumer confidence.

What is most frustrating for me is the lack of leadership. Ministers need to admit that, basically, they are not allowing foreign holidays and to mitigate the impact of that on the travel industry with proper financial support. The current approach is the worst of both worlds, where the travel industry is being allowed to fail and we are not even properly securing our borders against coronavirus threats.

Time is running out for our travel industry and the brilliant local businesses and staff that make it up. I sincerely hope that the Minister is listening properly to the debate today.