Hospitality Sector
Nigel Huddleston Excerpts(2 days, 23 hours ago)
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Nigel Huddleston (Droitwich and Evesham) (Con)
Before I start, may I refer hon. Members to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests? I have also taken hospitality below the declarable amount from UKHospitality and the BBPA—I am sure I am not the only one.
I thank all hon. Members for their contributions from across the UK. We have heard some enthusiastic and supportive comments on the industry, but it is a pity that the policies are not so supportive. From the start I was left wondering what planet some of those on the Government Benches are on. They are clearly not talking to the same hard-working and angry people working in the hospitality sector as those on the Opposition Benches are. If they had been, I do not believe for one minute they would have been so enthusiastically supportive of decisions and policies that are doing such immense damage to an industry that supports 3.5 million jobs in the UK.
Hospitality is one of the most important economic sectors and is our third biggest employer. It was a British success story. While we were in power between 2010 and 2024, we oversaw the creation of 4 million jobs—that is 800 jobs a day—and nearly 20% of all those new jobs created were in the hospitality sector. However, since Labour’s disastrous Budget, nearly half of all jobs lost have been in hospitality. Where Conservatives create, Labour destroys. The irony of this Government is that they say they are prioritising growth, yet they are implementing policies that do the opposite. The job losses in hospitality are a direct result of the unexpected and unnecessary employer national insurance increases that have added £1 billion to the cost of hiring people in this sector. The Government also whacked up business rates on hospitality, costing the sector a further half a billion pounds.
As a result of Labour’s decisions, a generation of young people will miss out on their first job opportunity in hospitality—a sector that is particularly enthusiastic about employing young people. Of the 164,000 job losses in the UK since last year’s Budget, almost 89,000 have been lost in hospitality, and more are expected. According to UKHospitality, 79% of hospitality businesses have had to raise prices, and more than half have cut staff. That is before the Deputy Prime Minister’s further attacks on business with her unemployment Bill, burdening UK businesses with more rules and regulations and costing businesses another £5 billion, according to the Government’s own estimates. As I said last year, the Chancellor’s Budget will go down in history as the most anti-business Budget that this country has ever had. Her legacy will be as the destroyer of jobs. We will see how much further she goes in this year’s Budget.
This Government are well on the way to securing the unenviable record of every Labour Government since the second world war of leaving office with unemployment higher than when they started. It is the private sector, business and especially the hospitality sector that are paying the price for Labour’s mistakes and poor judgment.
Nigel Huddleston
I will not because of time, I am afraid. I spent a good chunk of the summer travelling around the country, meeting key players in the tourism, hospitality, heritage and leisure sectors. Everyone was complaining about how hard they have been hit by this Government’s policies, and the sector is angry—so angry, in fact, that they have given the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Chancellor a middle name, and a good Anglo-Saxon one at that. They told me about job losses, inability to invest, and profit margins being eroded or disappearing all together. Seaside amusement arcades, for example, are closing their doors early, or on certain days, or all together, because it is no longer profitable to stay open.
The focus today is on hospitality, but it is clear that the wider tourism, hospitality and leisure sectors are all being hit. Nearly every sector overseen by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport has been hit by Labour policies, and this is a big deal. Why do people holiday in the UK, or come here from overseas to visit? It is because of our heritage sites, our museums, our art, our culture, our theatres, our festivals and our sporting events. About a million people visit the UK every year just to come and watch football games. All these sectors are being hit, and the 40 million-plus overseas visitors who come to the UK each year spend £33 billion in our pubs, bars, restaurants, hotels and so on. All that is at risk. Tourism is a highly competitive global industry, but this Government’s decisions are undermining our competitiveness in respect of both domestic and inbound visitors. We should always remember that inbound travel spend is all-important export revenue.
Let me respond to some of the comments made during the debate. The Minister for Creative Industries, Arts and Tourism said that this Government had made the “difficult” decisions to increase taxes. What a load of nonsense! The easiest—the laziest—thing for any Government to do is dip into other people’s pockets and spend money on their behalf. The difficult decision is to be restrained about spending and to reduce taxes, which is what we were doing before the election.
The hon. Members for Ealing Southall (Deirdre Costigan) and for Tipton and Wednesbury (Antonia Bance), among others, asked why we were not supporting the Deputy Prime Minister’s unemployment Bill. The answer is simple: it will cause more unemployment. The hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Andrew Lewin) asked why we were attacking the industry and talking it down. We are doing no such thing: we are talking this Government down and talking this Government’s policies down.
My hon. Friend the Member for Kingswinford and South Staffordshire (Mike Wood) pointed out that when we were in government, we rightly supported this sector to the tune of about £25 billion during the pandemic, with measures such as the furlough scheme, the cutting of VAT on tourism, the culture recovery fund and the sport survival fund. We were desperate to get the sector open as soon and as safely as possible while the then Opposition were saying that we should keep things closed for longer, so we will take no lectures from them on that.
My right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) rightly drew attention to the disgraceful fact that the hospitality sector is almost completely absent from the Government’s industrial strategy despite its importance. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Leicestershire (Mr Bedford) spoke of the need to talk to industry and then talk to the Treasury, credibly and confidently, with statistics and information. I do not believe that the DCMS is doing that. It does not appear that it carries any weight with the Treasury, as evidenced by the policies that are attacking all these sectors. My hon. Friend the Member for Stockton West (Matt Vickers) invited us all for a pint. I will take him up on that offer; the first round is on him. I believe that the hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Cameron Thomas), my constituency neighbour, did the same.
Several Members, especially Government Members, asked where the money would come from if we did not increase national insurance contributions. The answer is simple. We would not have spent £10 billion on inflation-busting pay rises for union mates. We would not have spent £8 billion on the National Wealth Fund, £7 billion on GB Energy—which does not produce any energy—or £35 billion on the Chagos surrender Bill. There is the answer.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Biggin Hill (Peter Fortune) highlighted the additional concerns of this sector given the impending hits to inheritance tax, business property relief and agricultural property relief, which are especially worrying for rural and farming communities. That point was also made by my hon. Friends the Members for South West Devon (Rebecca Smith) and for Chester South and Eddisbury (Aphra Brandreth).
It is clear from its policies, and from today’s debate, that Labour simply does not get business. Perhaps that should not be surprising, given how few members of the Cabinet have actually started or run a business, or even worked for or spent any significant time in the private sector. Few Labour Members have any understanding of, or appreciation for, the hard work and effort put in by entrepreneurs, risk-takers and owners of businesses, especially small businesses, who work so hard to employ others and generate taxes. Labour certainly knows how to spend other people’s money; it just has no idea how that money is generated in the first place.
On the Conservative Benches, we have a party that is unapologetically pro-business, because the Conservatives know that we can have good public services only if we have a dynamic private sector generating the taxes to pay for them. Supporting the private sector and enabling it to succeed is good for public services, too. The hospitality and tourism sectors know that they have a friend in the Conservative party. We appreciate them, and we want them to succeed. We stood by them during the pandemic, we appreciated and applauded their growth when we were in power, and we will be there again to work with them when this Government collapse and we pick up the pieces once more.
We will back business. We will revive the economy and bring opportunity and prosperity back to this country through pro-enterprise policies based on core Conservative principles: lower taxes, smaller Government, light regulation, personal responsibility, fiscal responsibility and living within our means—principles that my party, and only my party, understand and abide by. The British people deserve so much better than this shambolic Labour Government, and we will not rest until they get it.