Clause 33. — (Abolition of Investment Allowances and Amendments as to Initial Allowances.)

Part of Orders of the Day — Finance Bill – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 22 June 1966.

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Photo of Sir Raymond Gower Sir Raymond Gower , Barry 12:00, 22 June 1966

I want to ask the Chief Secretary what is the reason for the animus of the Government against the hotel and catering industry? My hon. Friend the Member for Worcestershire, South (Sir G. Nabarro) gave some very fair illustrations of the value of the industry to the economy and included a graphic quotation from a letter from my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Sir C. Taylor) showing how one hotel is contributing enormously, in proportion to its size, to the export earnings of the country.

That contribution is not, of course, limited to one hotel. We have seen the figures produced by a number of groups in London. I am informed that the percentage of foreign exchange earnings in room charges alone by Associated Hotels is 40 per cent., by Grand Metropolitan Hotels, 55 per cent., by the Lyons group, 48 per cent., and by the Savoy group, 73 per cent. The right hon. Gentleman should reflect that, in some ways, this is an even stronger case than my hon. Friend the Member for Worcestershire, South adduced so forcibly.

In the case of physical, manufactured goods, there is the job of finding an overseas purchaser and conveying the goods overseas. In the case of the tourist industry, we merely have to provide here the services which the visitors need. In a sense the industry delivers the goods more directly than do the manufacturing industries. Indeed, it does not make the demands that many manufacturing industries do on imported raw materials. In most cases, the product is native, with the tourists coming to see the country. Many stay in London, but now tourists are beginning to visit other parts of the country. We want to encourage them to travel more widely in Britain.

One would have thought that the Secretaries of State for Scotland and Wales—[HON. MEMBERS: "Where are they?"]—yes, where are they?—would have resigned because of the vital importance of tourism to the economies of Scotland and Wales, as, indeed, it is important to the economies of Ulster and of the Lake District and other parts of England.

Some of those parts of the country which do not have heavy industry and perhaps not as much agricultural wealth as other parts rely enormously on the growth of tourism. But Government policy seems to be directed to the destruction of the tourist industry. Perhaps those are extravagant words, but this is an astonishing commentary on what has happened.

My hon. Friend the Member for Worcestershire, South said that hotels must provide reasonable and good quality food, good wines and so on. They also must provide better public rooms—better lounges—than do hotels in most competing countries because of the peculiarity of our climate. We have the sort of climate which demands better lounges, reading rooms and television rooms in our hotels more than is the case in Italy, France and Spain, whose tourist industries get magnificent help from their Governments.

The Government have gravely underestimated the importance of tourism to the economy—and I am sure that the only Liberal here, the hon. Member for Inverness (Mr. Russell Johnston), will testify to the importance of tourism to Scotland as well as to other parts of the country.