Government Must Take Tourism Seriously

Liberal Democrat MP for Torbay, Adrian Sanders, is calling for the Department for Culture Media and Sport to take tourism seriously, or give up responsibility for it altogether.

Mr Sanders, a member of the Culture, Media and Sport select committee, has tabled a Parliamentary motion calling for funding cuts to Visit Britain’s budget to be reversed and for the Department for Business to take over responsibility for tourism if the DCMS continues to give it such a low priority.

Parliamentary answers from under secretary of state Barbara Follett revealed that only 10 staff are currently working on tourism in the DCMS and records have not been kept of how many were engaged on the policy area in the past.  It was also revealed that little was being done to coordinate transport networks with the needs of the tourist industry and that the Government has not evaluated what effect the cuts to Visit Britain’s budget will have on the industry.

Mr Sanders raised the matter of transferring responsibility for tourism with the Prime Minister but Gordon Brown stated that he has no plans to make the change.

Mr Sanders said: “Tourism is the key industry in Torbay and one of the most vital in the South West and indeed the country as a whole.  For too long the DCMS has treated tourism as an unimportant distraction.  It is seen as an easy target for funding cuts and there is a poor record of coordinating with the wishes of those in the industry as well as key partners such as the transport sector and the wider business community.”

“If the DCMS does not up its game, we need to look at radical options.  With the Olympics ahead and the potential to be one of the drivers for economic recovery, there is so much for the tourist industry to take advantage of but it needs the right support from Government at all levels.”

Comments

[Adrian]

I agree that VisitBritain should focus on marketing the UK overseas. As the fifth largest industry in the country, I would support the moving of the tourism brief to the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills. Under this arrangement I believe that tourism would gain greater influence with the Treasury.

It is my view that VisitBritain must fulfil its role and unite the industry to support tourism in the UK as a whole, rather than run projects that compete with a sector that needs all the help it can get.

[Peter Shearn]

Increase investment into tourism? Absolutely. Give that investment to VisitBritain? Absolutely not!

VisitBritain are hell-bent on competing with the industry itself as a publicly funded commercial entity and actively damaging it.

Tourism is one of the largest industries in Britain, it should have it own governmental department.
VisitBritain should to be stopped from (almost certainly illegally) interfering with the commercial aspects of the industry. It should be restructured to ensure it gets on with promoting tourism as per the original remit.

The public money they are wasting could have been put to better use helping the industry players directly with initiatives such as the now sadly defunct Honey Project in Newquay.