Tourism: Covid-19

Rosie Winterton Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

I rise to speak in support of many tourism organisations in the wonderful city of Glasgow, which I am so proud to represent. There have been real challenges for many cultural organisations in the city, not least Glasgow Life, the arm’s length organisation of Glasgow City Council that runs our art galleries, museums and sports facilities. Kelvingrove Art Gallery and the Riverside Museum in in my constituency, which have only just reopened, are only able to open on a limited basis and people have to book, so they are really struggling to make the money they need to keep going. Glasgow Life has seen a loss of around £12 million since March. I urge the UK Government to be clear about the Barnett consequentials from the Housing, Communities and Local Government measures that were put in place for England, so that Scotland can see if it can get a share as well.

Smaller organisations such as the Sharmanka Kinetic theatre, the Trongate and Glasgow Police Museum have been able to keep going but their numbers are down, and the effect on the wider tourism economy has had an impact on all museums, whether they are large or small.

In Glasgow, we have benefited hugely for many years from event tourism through the Scottish Event Campus in my constituency. We have the fantastic SSE Hydro, a 14,000-seater venue that has been one of the top 10 venues in the world since opening in 2013, with over 140 events a year. Its closure at the moment has an impact on the surrounding area of Finnieston, which has amazing restaurants and bars, and on the hotels within the wider city as well. I understand from the Scottish Tourism Alliance that hotel capacity in Glasgow is sitting at only about 11% for the next few months. People are clearly put off from coming if they do not know what is going to happen and they cannot plan ahead.

The Scottish Event Campus has been hosting the NHS Louisa Jordan over the past few months and has made a great contribution to that, but we need to recognise that, in doing so and having that instead of the SEC, we are losing out on £136 million a year to the Glasgow economy in the events that the SEC brings in with not just music but conferences, exhibitions and other events bringing in half a million visitors per year to Glasgow.

Lastly, I would like to mention the impact on English language summer schools, such as St Andrew’s College in my constituency. They are seeing a really serious impact, because lots of young people do come and travel to Scotland for these language schools, and they cannot do that now. They bring approximately 10,000 foreign teenagers and employ 500 temporary staff over the summer period. That has gone for them now, and they are very limited in the support they have been able to have. I make a real plea to the UK Government to look more widely at support for the English language teaching sector and to make sure that particular measures are put in place for support through the immigration system as well, so people can come to Glasgow in the future.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call Sally-Ann Hart—for, I am afraid, one minute.

[Sally-Ann Hart (Hastings and Rye) (Con)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I would like to endorse the comments made today about coaches on behalf of the coach companies in Hastings and Rye—Empress Coaches, Rambler Coaches and Nova Bussing. Tourism is very important to Hastings and Rye, but we are now seeing an increase in benefit claims, with over 14,000 individuals on universal credit as from July 2020. I would like to thank the jobcentre staff, who have been heroic in their efforts to support local people.

This Government have given vital support to tourism and tourism-related businesses throughout coronavirus, and so many of my constituents are enormously grateful for that, but ongoing support is desperately needed. For example, Hastings normally has a buoyant English language school culture, with thousands of students coming every year to stay with families. As well as language tuition, trips are organised to our amazing tourist attractions, and local businesses such as the ABC Student Tours will struggle. I fear these businesses will not survive, which will have a long-term impact on our local economy.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call the SNP spokesperson, Drew Hendry.

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[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I rise to sum up what has been, as such debates often are, a very informative debate. Hon. Members have spoken with great passion about the issues facing their constituencies. I particularly thank the hon. Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby), who secured the debate and spoke passionately about the need to support our coastal communities.

The UK tourism industry is the sixth-largest in the world. It employs 3.3 million people and generates revenue of £155.4 billion. In this debate, we have toured the nation, and this summer, I myself visited many different parts of our tourism sector to see the impact of covid, the effect of Government support and what additional measures the sector needed. We cannot truly understand the impact unless we have seen it at first hand.

I visited the zoos in London and Knowsley, close to the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), who made excellent points about reduced capacity first highlighted on my visit to Merseyside, and the zoo in Newquay. I see the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) in his place, but unfortunately we did not reach him. I also visited the Eden Project in his constituency and went paddle boarding on the Fowey.

I visited aquariums in Brighton and Plymouth, Hever castle and Powderham castle, the site of the proposed Eden Project North, in Morecambe, and the winter gardens there. I also went to the Manchester museums and galleries and Crownhill fort in Plymouth. I visited Brighton pier and the i360, and the Van Gogh immersive experience in York, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell), who made an excellent speech about need to return confidence to our sector. Although I did not visit Warwick castle this summer, I did visit when I was a child, and I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) will invite me back again.

I also stayed at the Seven Bays caravan park in north Cornwall, and I am pleased that the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) stayed at Unison’s Croyde Bay caravan park. I met hotel, restaurant and bar owners around the country, sometimes in person and sometimes on Zoom. Each had a unique perspective, but all had the same central problem: the huge financial black hole caused by the three-and-a-half-month closure of their organisations and the huge drop in visitor numbers. They all spoke about their fears about the coming winter and their future prospects.

Tourism was always going to be hit hard by a pandemic that meant people had to stay at home. When some of the restrictions were lifted in June, when the sun shone and the newspapers led with photos of bursting beaches and packed-out towns, it seemed to many that summer and the tourism industry underpinning it might just have been spared, but tourism reopened later than any other industry. Despite what the front pages might have shown, it has been, and still is, operating at severely restricted capacity. The industry might have had an okay August, but it lost Easter, May half term, two bank holidays and the whole of June. Those four months are crucial to the industry. Some 92% of tourism businesses said that their revenue had decreased by more than 50% as a result—a point made by the hon. Members for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard), East Devon (Simon Jupp) and Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss). This means that the industry is effectively operating through three consecutive winters: the winters of 2019 and 2020 and the winter of coronavirus.

Visit Britain has forecast that tourism revenue in 2020 will decrease by £68.8 billion, which equates to a loss of more than 1 million full-time jobs. Including the 300,000 outlying jobs also at risk, the figure is close to 1.35 million—a third of all tourism jobs. That is 1.35 million full-time jobs that could be lost in the sector, 1.35 million people—people with bills, people with families to feed and people who need and want to work, to provide and contribute.

The Chancellor described his choice to end furlough next month as one of the most difficult decisions. I know the Minister, who is always very kind when we talk, is listening diligently, and I ask that he listen to the tourism industry and reconsider the decision to end furlough. The loss of more than 1 million jobs would be devastating, not just for individual families and households, but for the tourism industry and the health of our whole economy.

With much of the tourism industry yet to reopen and the main summer tourismt season ending in September, ending the furlough scheme means two things: mass unemployment and mass business closures. It is easy to think about the tourism industry from the perspective of the consumer—we can all imagine ourselves sacrificing our holiday to save lives during a deadly pandemic—but we must remember that tourism means jobs. We know that the UK tourism industry is one of our biggest employers and that it is worth 9% of GDP, but many people do not realise that it is also the largest non-governmental mechanism for transferring wealth from urban to rural and seaside communities—a point made by the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams). These rural and seaside economies are important. Coastal tourism, pre covid, was valued at £13.7 billion in England and £17.1 billion in GB. Tourism employs 20% of the workforce in most coastal towns and more than 50% in many, including Newquay, St Ives, Skegness, Mablethorpe, Cleveleys, Whitby and Minehead. The hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) made the excellent point that the food industry is inextricably linked to the prospects of tourism. Jobs in coastal towns have been disproportionately affected during the pandemic, and covid has cost seaside towns across the country £10.3 billion in lost revenue, according to the National Coastal Tourism Academy. The hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) correctly made the point that destination management organisations need support to help these economies, and the hon. Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall) spoke about promoting domestic tourism as a whole.

That is not say that things were rosy for these coastal regions before covid. It is no secret that many seaside towns in Britain have been struggling for many years. Poverty, inequality and deprivation presided over by successive austerity-driven Conservative Governments have meant that many coastal towns have been in social and economic crisis since long before the pandemic swept ashore. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), when he was in Cornwall, said:

“We need a targeted extension of the furlough scheme for the hardest-hit sectors and proper support in place to help those who are unemployed back into work. People are worried about their job prospects. The Labour Party is focused on fighting for every job and every part of the country.”

He is of course absolutely right. He said that in a coastal town because he and we all know that this must include revitalising our coastal communities, reviving jobs and industries, and diversifying these economies. The current crisis has made it patently clear that this is more urgent than ever.

We cannot discuss tourism in earnest without acknowledging the hospitality industry—one of the key forces powering the UK’s tourism economy. Hotels, pubs and restaurants rely on the tourist trade, and vice versa. Equally, the coach industry that delivers the customers to the hospitality industry has been absolutely decimated by this crisis—a point well made by the hon. Members for Angus (Dave Doogan) and for Sedgefield (Paul Howell). While the Chancellor seemingly saved the day with the eat out to help out scheme—and it cannot be denied that the nation ate out with gusto—the fact remains that only half of restaurants are open and two thirds of businesses are still not making a profit. The number of staff furloughed still remains similar to July, with 51% of hospitality staff still not back at work in August. Taken with the fact that over 80% of employees in the tourism industry have been furloughed, compared with 32% of the total UK workforce, it is clear that ending support for everyone at the end of October will be disastrous. It is a one-size-fits-all approach that is destined to fail. We need a targeted extension to the furlough scheme to protect our most vulnerable workers and industries through this critical time. I am pleased that the hon. Members for North West Norfolk (James Wild) and for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) made these points.

As a party, we are also calling for a £1.7 billion hospitality and high streets fightback fund to help tourism and hospitality businesses that are unable to fully trade. We are calling for this because Labour recognises that the Government’s one-size-fits-all approach to jobs risks tourism falling through the cracks. As a minimum, the Government, rather than clawing back the underspend in grants, need to redeploy it to other industries, particularly those struggling in the visitor economy. While the epidemic has dealt a devastating blow to our tourism industry, with a swift and urgent Government intervention there is an opportunity not just for survival but for recovery and growth—an opportunity to limit the long-term impact of covid-19 not just on people’s livelihoods and businesses but on our towns and our collective heritage and history.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call the Minister, Nigel Huddleston.

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[Duncan Baker (North Norfolk) (Con)]

May I place on the record my thanks for everything that you have done for me and for my constituents? I know that you have already visited, but you are very welcome to come back for a Cromer crab sandwich in the near future. I did not get to speak today, but I know that you will take on board many of the initiatives that have been put forward. Can you also spare a thought for the impact that last night’s announcements will have on the tourism industry, particularly the effect of the six-person limit on larger holiday lets? Can I finally say—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. I think that the hon. Gentleman has had quite a good intervention. I really have to say to him that it is very important that Members remember to speak through the Chair, so he should not refer to the Minister as “you.”

[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.