Tobias Ellwood: ...hogged the wicket, with grand hotels, theatres, music halls, its own football club, Boscombe—now better known as Athletic Football Club Bournemouth—and spas that rivalled that found in Bath, attracting the wealthiest in society to the coastline. They even prompted Sir Percy Florence Shelley, son of the novelist Mary Shelley, to buy an estate in this area for his mother, who is now...
Tobias Ellwood: ...issue when I was shadow Tourism Minister. I looked at it without prejudice or passion, and it became clear that it is very important for the tourism industry-I say that just as the hon. Member for Bath (Mr Foster) departs. The Tourism Alliance has done a lot of work on this. However, I stepped away from the specific issue of tourism and thought about how it might benefit or damage the...
Tobias Ellwood: ...is vague about how local authorities will foot the bill without having a knock-on impact on other services. It is worth reminding ourselves what personal care means. It is personal hygiene, such as bathing, continence management and assistance with eating; personal assistance, such as dressing and so forth; and simple treatment. It does not include nursing, which is not seen as part of...
Tobias Ellwood: ...with the governing bodies, the objective must be to keep gambling fair and open, and to keep crime out of gambling. One question that has been asked several times, including by the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster), is, can the Gambling Commission do its job? He mentioned the mystery shopping exercise, which is where the commission is supposed to zip around the internet, posing as an...
Tobias Ellwood: ...have occasional meetings and coffee around a table." We need something more robust if we are to get governing bodies to take full responsibility for how their sports are acting. The hon. Member for Bath mentioned that 50 cases have come through. Is that right?
Tobias Ellwood: ...point that those companies are licensed in other countries. Many companies that are based on the internet are not licensed anywhere. That is the point that I think that the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster) and I are trying to make. Someone can set up an internet company anywhere in the world, if they can get an internet service provider with access to the world wide web. Those are the...
Tobias Ellwood: ...in a minority report to say, "This isn't the way forward. This isn't what we should be doing." I hope the Minister will be able to comment. The scale of the problem is huge. The hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster) and I may have slightly different statistics, but they amount to the same thing. I understand that there are 7,000 internet gambling companies online, about 6,000 of which are...
Tobias Ellwood: ...by the Select Committee—it is not written entirely by the Minister and his team. In this situation, we will get a rose-tinted picture. The first intervention, which came from the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster)—I want to call him my hon. Friend—was pertinent. Will the Minister deal with any of the more taxing issues, which he knows full well we are likely to start debating right...
Tobias Ellwood: ...mêlée of how RDAs run themselves. That is what we are saying. If we are to be serious about tourism, we need to ensure that there is not the double-accounting referred to by the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster), with the Prime Minister standing up and saying, "Yes, I very much support tourism."
Tobias Ellwood: ...is fed up and frustrated with the Government—nothing has come forward. We need a conclusion to the saga. I remind the Minister what he said in November in response to the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster): "I can give the assurance that the hon. Member for Bath was looking for regarding what will happen if we do not sell the Tote to racing and it goes on the open market. The agreement...
Tobias Ellwood: .... As shadow Minister with responsibility for tourism, I have a national interest in the matter—I see that the Culture, Media and Sport spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster), is in his place. We must ensure that British tourism thrives. We are currently suffering from a tourism deficit—more people choose to holiday abroad than in the UK—and we...
Tobias Ellwood: ...clear. It believes that there is no role for further legislation, but it makes clear that more can be done, and better, to co-ordinate certain aspects. I was interested to hear the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster) say that there is no association or body to knock heads together, so that a collective view can be taken. I shall leave it to the hon. Gentleman to recommend the formation of a...
Tobias Ellwood: ...(Mr. Chope) on securing it. Bournemouth, Christchurch and east Dorset is now one of the largest conurbations—perhaps it is the largest—in the south-west, challenging the Bristol and Bath area. For some reason, Bournemouth has been selected as one of 21 key towns and cities across the country for development. Can the Minister explain why Bournemouth has been targeted and why its...
Tobias Ellwood: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster), who, as always, spoke with expertise on the matter. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Mr. Swire) on securing this timely debate, which has been interesting and stimulating. I join him in paying tribute to Sir Tristram Ricketts, who played such an active role over four decades in the very subject that we...