HC Deb 16 December 1992 vol 216 cc534-42

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Nicholas Baker.]

10.19 pm
Mr. Anthony Steen (South Hams)

Between 20 April and 12 October this year, Seville hosted the first universal exposition to be held in Europe since the Brussels exposition of 1958. One hundred and eight nations displayed the best that they could offer. As with the Olympics, the Spanish showed their flair for organisation. The event, which was fittingly proclaimed the eighth wonder of the world, brought back fond memories of the 1951 Festival of Britain and was an ideal opportunity for the British Government to show the very best of Britain.

In April this year, expectations were high. The Today newspaper wrote: a £28 million showcase of British excellence will be the main attraction at EXPO 92. The British Pavilion, a steel and glass structure the size of Westminster Abbey, will bring lucrative business deals to fifty UK sponsoring firms. The pavilion, which reputedly cost £25 million of taxpayers' money—perhaps the Minister will say whether that was so—was built for that occasion and for that occasion only. It had a six-month shelf life. Other pavilions were built with a second purpose in mind once the expo was over. For example, the Spanish pavilion was sold to Spanish universities and is being put to good use. Am I right in presuming that there is no function for the British pavilion and that taxpayers are paying £25 million which is then to be written off?

The Department of Trade and Industry claimed:

Britain will have a first-class pavilion to demonstrate her originality and the scale of her resurgence in many areas of manufacturing, technology and services. Tragically, the reality was very different.

The British pavilion was on one of the main promenades where some of the larger pavilions were based. It was not far from the United States pavilion, but it was a pity that our Government did not take a leaf from the Americans' book. The American pavilion was funded not by the taxpayer but business sponsorship. I am told that the entire bill for the British pavilion is to be picked up by the British taxpayer.

Our pavilion looked like some others—water flowing from the roof and a pond below. That seems to be the favoured design today. The only trouble was that there was nothing much inside other than a procession of escalators transporting people to small floor areas which were supposed to reflect the essence of Britain. There were three or four displays illustrating Britain as a leader in the scientific world.

Oddly enough, the public seemed to judge the success of each country's exhibition by the length of the queue outside. The question was, "How long is the queue at such and such a pavilion?" Canada topped the list with a five-hour wait but the United Kingdom's queue was only about 40 minutes, in spite of the fact that the designers had so designed the pavilion that there was a bottleneck at the entrance which restricted the number of people who could enter.

The governing factor was the number who could watch a video being shown in the entrance to the pavilion. In the meantime, the rest of the pavilion was virtually empty. It was a pity that the video made so little mention of our heritage: our grand buildings, the history of our monarchy, our traditions, the beauty of our countryside, the peculiar British institutions, the wonders of Scotland—the highlands and the islands—the mountains and language of Wales and the special flavour of Northern Ireland.

Once the eight-minute film had finished, there was a rush to the escalators like the first day of a Harrods sale or the Northern line during the rush hour. On one floor there was a Land Rover perched in the middle of nowhere; on another, in a sealed container, Marks and Spencer underwear. Such was the dearth of products that it looked as though the bailiffs had made a recent visit to the inside of the British pavilion. Perhaps it was a true, but unfortunate, reflection of our country. Certainly those experiencing Britain through the pavilion must have come to the sad conclusion that the country must be nearly bankrupt. That is not so. This country has history, imagination, flavour, creativity, skills, ingenuity, a race of various cultures, colours and religions, a variety of different political views, democracy and a rich culture. It is a country in which it is safe to invest and it is a unique place in which to live.

The public wanted souvenirs, but I am afraid that they were nowhere to be found. All the other pavilions had stickers and souvenirs and people rushed to get them. In the British pavilion, there was none. At the information desk, I was told that there were no stickers, no pins, no tourist information and no shop in which to buy things. That was not entirely true. There was a shop, but I am afraid that it was not doing much business: a young man who was hovering around the shell of the shop confessed in hushed tones that the shop was in fact in liquidation and that the liquidator was somewhere about, but not easily located.

What other country at a worldwide exposition would tell the world that the sole concessionaire to a great pavilion, which had won the franchise against all other competition and been granted this special favour by the DTI, had gone bust? Perhaps, of course, it was a somewhat novel idea of the DTI that the pavilion was designed to exploit our skill as a country in dealing with bankruptcy. Perhaps, after all, this was part of the DTI's grand design. Perhaps it was proud that we were the only country able to provide on-the-spot advice on liquidations. The bareness of the area and the windswept look of the first floor gave the impression of one of the British seaside resorts off-season—Clacton, perhaps.

In its wisdom, the DTI selected Bickerton Associates as exclusive concessionaire for all the products displayed in the pavilion. Bickerton was the sole distributor and was appointed as such. No doubt the DTI officials were most cautious when selecting the concessionaire, bearing in mind that it would reflect the business profile of Great Britain to the world. The DTI is the guardian of trade and industry. Those who dealt with Bickerton took it that the DTI had looked carefully at the antecedents of the company, its track record, its management and the acumen of its directors. All industries in Britain wishing to exhibit or to sell goods in the pavilion had to do so through Bickerton. It was an exclusive franchise.

It is odd that DTI officials did not ascertain that an identical company, run by the same directors, had been struck off the Companies house records in 1989. That company had failed to submit accounts and annual returns. Could one conceive of anyone, let alone the DTI, appointing as the United Kingdom's ambassador a company whose board comprised the directors of a bankrupt company?

Bickerton representatives, together with DTI officials, selected British companies to sell stock at the shop. Bickerton requested advance payments of 8 per cent. of projected sales from each of the participating companies, including Dartington Crystal, whose managing director lives in my constituency. He was asked to send an advance of £10,200 to Bickerton and Bickerton was apparently supposed to forward that money, as an 8 per cent. advance, to the DTI. I should like the Minister to tell the House whether that money was actually sent to the DTI or whether Bickerton pocketed it. Bickerton took its stock to Spain without paying any of the British companies for it, and it started to trade. I should perhaps mention that we are not talking about peanuts but about £500,000-worth of goods or more.

The number of people visiting the pavilion was unfortunately far below the DTI's expectations. That is no wonder when one realises that there was not much inside to see. The DTI predicted, quite wrongly, 18,000 people a day. It now says that it got the figure wrong and that the actual figure was 12,000 a day. The British companies involved say that the real figure was 9,000 a day. Other pavilions had double or treble those numbers because people wanted to go and see what they had to offer. Understandably, sales were far lower than had been envisaged. The sales were less than £400,000, compared with Bickerton's forecast of £1.4 million and the DTI's own inflated sales forecast of £2.4 million.

Bickerton went into receivership in August, leaving 54 companies stranded and owed more than £500,000. The companies have just recently had their deposits returned after a battle with DTI officials. As for the rest of the money owed—£40,000 in the case of Dartington Crystal—the DTI seems to be washing its hands of the matter, saying that it is not the Department's responsibility. Who is responsible? The DTI introduced Bickerton to all the companies, saying that it was Government-appointed, Government-selected and Government-approved. The DTI's claim that it is not responsible for the concessionaire's activity is one of the shabbiest attempts to avoid responsibility that I have ever heard.

The DTI was involved in the pavilion's activities up to its eyeballs. When the concessionaire, Bickerton, discovered that under Spanish law it could not trade as the main retailer at Expo 92 without registering as a Spanish company, the DTI took on the main retailer role and banked all the credit card receipts in a DTI account set up in Seville. I am told that the account still exists. The Minister may wish to be briefed on the subject—I am prepared to give him time to be so—but will he tell the House how much money there is in the secret Seville account? Why did we open an account in Seville? When will the Minister get the money out and pass it over to the companies which have lost so much?

Given that the DTI had an intimate involvement in the retailing operation, it must honour its commitments by repaying the suppliers who were persuaded to offer to sell goods at the exhibition. After all, we are the party of small firms, and I should have thought that the Minister would want to salvage some pride from what has become an appalling affair.

The scandal was not hidden away in the corridors of Whitehall: it was there for all to see at the most prestigious trade fair ever. That is the sort of incompetence that one might expect from a third-world dictatorship or a banana republic, not from a member of the exclusive G7 club of industrialised nations and the country that holds the presidency of the EC.

As well as there being no pins or stickers, no propaganda or shop, and nothing for visitors to take away, those in the pavilion could not use the computers to show Britain's high-tech profile. I do not know whether the minister knows the appalling catalogue of disasters. The Apricot computer system crashed two months after it was installed, and was inoperative for three months, so it is understandable that there was not much throughput in the British pavilion: there was nothing very much for people to do—they could not buy or see anything; all they could do was go up and down the wretched escalators.

After queueing for about 30 minutes, watching two films, travelling up and down the building and searching in vain for any little reminder of our day, I thought that nothing would be better than a refreshing cup of tea. I was with my brother-in-law, who works for the EC Commission, and we decided to go down to the basement and enjoy a nice cup of British tea. I thought that Twining or Jacksons would go down a treat, so we went to the bowels of the pavilion and asked, "May we have a pot of tea?" A smiling student offered us a teabag. "Cucumber sandwiches?" asked my brother-in-law. We were offered a scone the size of a football and as dry as the Nevada desert.

The cakes were Spanish; the place was messy, undistinguished and unpleasant—like a typical British greasy spoon café. There were dirty plates and cups everywhere, napkins all over the floor and the staff seemed to be inexperienced students. I had heard rumors that the café was not only undistinguished, but was selling non-British goods, which was certainly borne out by the cakes. We had a battle even to get English wine in the pavilion.

I heard about the appalling things going on at Expo 92 in June, and posed a number of parliamentary questions to the Minister of State about English wine. On 30 June I asked whether he would remove all Spanish wine from the British pavilion. It seemed sensible to have English wine at a British pavilion.

Needless to say, the Minister said that he would not remove the Spanish wine. Even though it was the British pavilion, he wanted to keep the Spanish wine: Although I have insisted that the catering concessionaire makes available a range of English wine"— that was good of him— this alone does not provide the choice of price and varieties required to run a commercial operation."—[Official Report, 30 June 1992; Vol. 210, c. 530.] I am puzzled: was it the British pavilion or the Spanish pavilion that we were running?

Then we had the problem with Bollinger, which insisted that no English sparkling wine should be sold in the pavilion because it had paid to sponsor the champagne. So all English sparkling wine was out. At this point, I should declare an interest: I am the adviser—originally, the honorary adviser—to the English Vineyards Association, which represents 200 commercial vineyards and was pretty sore that English champagne could not be sold in the pavilion. English champagne is delicious. One can buy it for £7 or £8 and, at a recent blind tasting, the English sparkling wine was declared to be as good as the non-vintage champagne—a view that I can certainly support.

Neither sparkling nor plain English wine was served on the occasion of the British national day. I believe that Spanish wine was served on that occasion. In his answer of 30 June, the Minister said that no English wine was suitable for the occasion of the British national day. What is wrong with Impresario, a sparkling white wine which has recently been ranked with the top three non-vintage champagnes, even though it cannot officially be called champagne because it is English? What is wrong with us that we will not promote our own products, and think that everything that we buy from abroad must be better?

It seems to me that the Department of Trade and Industry officials were not up to the job. It would be invidious, in this short debate, to mention names, but I will let the Minister have the list. I hope that all the officials concerned have been promoted, because that is probably all that can be done with them. I was not so much upset and angry as dismayed that such a sloppy and bad impression should be given not only to millions of foreign visitors but to the renowned British companies which had been invited to sell their goods.

We now reach the epilogue. Many of the pavilions had water themes, and ours was no exception—the water came down over the front of the pavilion, and there were pools of water, rather like a moat, around it. It was clear that the people visiting our pavilion felt that something had gone wrong with Great Britain. They were saddened by the image. They obviously had some affection for our people and some understanding of our plight. Unlike any other pond anywhere in all the acres of the site, our pond had coins thrown into it. Clearly, the public of the world realised that Britain was in a bad way, and threw coins into the moat to show that they understood our problem. I was concerned that there was no liquidator in the shop; perhaps he was down there in his gumboots picking up the coins to help the shop to make good its losses.

Such was my experience of our great British pavilion that I feel that the DTI has something to answer for. I would not trust any of the DTI officials concerned to run a business in which I was involved, and I certainly would not give them a chance to spend my money.

10.37 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Technology (Mr. Edward Leigh)

I am well aware of the keen interest of my hon. Friend the Member for South Hams (Mr. Steen) in promoting British industry—an interest that is shared by every hon. Member. We all admire and respect his unflagging energy and vigour. My hon. Friend is also a firm believer in "buy British" campaigns, especially if they include the sale of English wines. I recall that my hon. Friend tabled no fewer than 12 parliamentary questions in March and June about the availability of English wines at the British pavilion at Expo. I shall return to the specifics of English wine if time allows.

In summer 1988, the Prime Minister, then Mrs. Thatcher, made it clear that Britain's contribution to Expo was to be the best, the very best"; and from the reports that I have received, it was. That is not to say, in fairness to my hon. Friend, that there were no lessons to learn from our participation. With the benefit of hindsight, there were. But, as I shall explain, the British pavilion at Expo' 92 attracted a great deal of interest and a great deal of comment—the vast majority of it favourable comment.

The British pavilion was acclaimed as the most significant and attractive pavilion on the whole Expo site—and there were more than 100 pavilions from which to choose. It was the envy of many other national participants. The man-made water wall along the length of the frontage attracted universal admiration. It was technologically the most advanced pavilion, both in structure and design. Moreover, it won four awards for construction and design and one for the audiovisual presentation, and has been entered for three more.

During the planning stage, an early decision was taken that the pavilion should be truly designed and built in Britain. With the exception of groundworks, that objective was achieved. The architects, engineers, quantity surveyors and the supporting professional team were all well-established United Kingdom practices, and were all appointed on a competitive basis. To conform with Spanish law, we were required to appoint a local associate architect to advise on the requirements of the building regulations in the locality. That role did not include any creative input.

Construction work on the pavilion was tendered competitively in the United Kingdom, in the form of approximately 50 works packages.

Mr. Steen

I am complaining not about the design but about what, or what was not, inside the pavilion.

Mr. Leigh

I shall get to that, but my hon. Friend has made some serious allegations about our efforts, and it is important to set the record straight.

The structure was built in the United Kingdom and shipped to Seville for erection under the supervision of British engineers and technicians. Unskilled labour was recruited locally. The supervisory management contractors were also from the United Kingdom.

The interior design is obviously of particular interest to my hon. Friend and he has been critical of the interior arrangement of the pavilion. I respect his views, even if I cannot share them. However, he may not be aware that private sector management consultants were appointed to examine Spanish perceptions of the United Kingdom and of the British people before detailed planning of the interior began.

The consultants' findings were: the British were viewed as being not very friendly; there was a lack of awareness of United Kingdom artistic and technical creativity; there was a strong interest in the United Kingdom as a tourist destination; and the Spanish response to British fashion was negative.

Those findings were taken fully into account in the interior design developed by Conran Design, which was chosen by a panel of judges representing the private sector and the sponsoring Government Departments. Conran's interpretation projected an outward-looking, thrusting and forward-looking nation. That was reflected in different ways through audio-visual and static displays and through the multi-media theatre production.

The interior layout contained five elements, which each addressed the overall concept: a welcome area, where a 288-screen video presentation invited visitors to discover Britain today; the upper terrace depicting British scientific and engineering achievements in the four elements; the theatre, where a multi-media spectacle showed how future discoveries depended on communications, in which Britain excels in many ways; the lower terrace, where visitors continued to explore the elements; and the concourse, where Royal Doulton, Land Rover and Marks and Spencer displayed examples of original British products.

The consultants who had been commissioned to analyse Spanish perceptions were retained to question visitors to the pavilion. Well over 4,000 interviews were carried out. Most visitors thought that the pavilion was impressive, and 38 per cent. thought it very impressive.

The pavilion aroused increased interest in Britain as a leisure location, and nearly half the visitors left with a more favourable impression. The theatre show was considered excellent by visitors of all nationalities and several said that it was the best that they had visited. The British team of young navigators was highly praised. I hope that that sets straight the record on the interior design of the pavilion.

The British pavilion was one of the largest. It occupied nearly 7,000 sq m and stood 27 m high—almost as high as Westminster abbey. In short, the pavilion was, and remains, a glowing tribute and testimony to British engineering and arthitectural expertise.

The pavilion attracted a total of 2.2 million visitors, which required an orderly throughput of 12,000 visitors per day throughout the six months of the Expo. Some pavilions had a larger throughput but on a free-flow basis, not in such a structured way. Furthermore, no other pavilion had pre-planned that its visitors would spend at least 45 minutes touring the various displays.

Mr. Steen

What will happen to it?

Mr. Leigh

My hon. Friend keeps asking me what will happen to the pavilion. There has been a lot of interest in its future. It is generally recognised that it was one of the best designed and most successful, and there is every possibility that it will be retained on site as part of the science park. I hope that that reassures my hon. Friend.

The organisers predicted, fairly accurately, that there would be a total of 40 million visits during the Expo—an average daily throughput of more than 200,000 visitors. No pavilion, including that of the host nation, Spain, could hope to cater for that number.

Some pavilions allowed a free flow of visitors, as we had done ourselves at other Expos. That was certainly one way to build up impressive numbers, but on this occasion the design team for the British pavilion devised a system under which multilingual navigators escorted groups of 200 visitors through the pavilion at 15-minute intervals.

Even expert opinions vary on the effectiveness of that approach, and my hon. Friend is entitled to be critical. Some are critical that the 2.2 million visitors to the British pavilion, representing a little more than 5 per cent. of the total Expo visits, was too low. Others would argue that to hold captive the attention of more than 2 million visitors for at least 45 minutes was a very laudable achievement.

I believe that there is something to be said in favour of both the brief and the extended visits. On the one hand, more people get at least an impressionistic view of what Britain has to offer; on the other hand, the 45-minute visitor is likely to go away with a more lasting impression of what he or she has seen.

I should point out that the concessions to operate both the shop and the restaurant in the British pavilion were put out to competitive tender. The successful tenderers for the shop were selected partly on the basis of their experience in operating gift shops in museums and at fairs.

The Department of Trade and Industry tender for the shop concession specified that the products available should be British and of high quality. The selection of products was made by the concessionaire, but the DTI retained the power of veto.

The DTI guaranteed that the products of four British sponsoring companies would be available in the shop, provided that they met the terms set by the concessionaires. In all other respects, the business conducted between the concessionaires and their suppliers was a private commercial matter.

As my hon. Friend has explained, the concessionaire ran into financial difficulties when sales targets were not reached and they could not meet payments due to the suppliers. It is too easy to blame the problems of the shop concessionaires on lack of foresight, but nobody could have predicted that the Expo visitors in the first three months of Expo would come almost entirely from Seville and spend very little.

Nobody could have predicted the financial difficulties faced by a large number of Expo concessionaires. The British pavilion shop was not the only one which failed to reach its sales targets. Nor could anyone have expected the very high entrance fees to Expo to dampen on-site sales so dramatically. [Interruption.] In reply to my hon. Friend's sedentary intervention, let me say that, unlike some states, we were not prepared to subsidise the shops. It was a commercial arrangement.

An unexpectedly high proportion of Spanish visitors brought picnics to the Expo and spent relatively little in the shops. One reason may have been the excessively high entrance charges which, for a family of two adults and three children, could have been up to £100. There is little doubt that the high royalty payments demanded by the Expo authorities added to the problem by exerting upward pressure on prices in shops, restaurants and other concessions.

Mr. Steen

What concerns me is that £500,000-worth of British industry's money is locked up with the DTI or lost. What will the DTI do about that?

Mr. Leigh

If my hon. Friend will allow me, I shall come to that as quickly as I can, but it is important that I should set out the facts in order to put the matter straight.

It is hardly surprising that some concessions lost money. One could argue that a larger retail company might have coped better with the cash flow problem. The House should know that the many large retailers invited to tender all declined that opportunity.

Because of the unforeseen failure of the pavilion shop, DTI Ministers decided to make an ex gratia payment to those British suppliers who had made advanced royalty payments to the concessionaires. To help finance their own royalty payment to the DTI, the shop concessionaires had required an up-front royalty payment from their suppliers. Although there was no legal requirement to do so, the DTI made a without-prejudice ex gratia refund of those royalty payments to the suppliers.

A total of 15 separate ex gratia payments have been made to companies which supplied the pavilion shop. I am aware of only two companies which have expressed dissatisfaction with the amount of money that they received. Their disputes, however, involve wider issues and it would not be appropriate to discuss the detail of them in the House. I hope that that answers some of the questions that my hon. Friend asked about the concessionaires.

The total budget allocation from Government funds for the British participation at Expo was set at £28.9 million. The £1.2 million expenditure on the cultural programme was included in the overall cost. Private sector sponsorship, in cash and in kind, was valued at £5 million.

Expo '92 was staged in Seville to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the discovery of the new world. It ran from 20 April to 12 October 1992, attracted more than 40 million visitors and 110 nations participated which, together with theme pavilions, corporate participation and the autonomous regions of Spain, collectively amounted to a larger number of pavilions than at any previous Expo. The theme was the "age of discovery" —

The motion having been made after Ten o'clock, and the debate having continued for half an hour, MADAM SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at eleven minutes to Eleven o'clock.