§ Mr. FearnTo ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport what funding his Department gives for the provision of tourist information about Britain on the Internet. [32942]
§ Mr. Tom ClarkeThe British Tourist Authority's website costs approximately £200,000 a year to develop and maintain. Funding for it comes from the BTA's grant-in-aid (£35 million in 1997/98).
§ Mr. FearnTo ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport what is his Department's assessment of the quality of tourist information about Britain currently made available on the Internet by(a) Government directly funded bodies, (b) other non-commercial organisations and (c) private companies. [32940]
§ Mr. Tom ClarkeThe British Tourist Authority has an excellent website, which recently won a leading tourism technology award at the annual ENTER conference, beating off contenders from around the world. The site address is www.visitbritain.com. There are a great many other tourism-related sites on the Internet. As with all advertising media, the quality of these sites varies considerably.
118Wits value, concluded by his Department and its agencies for the years (a) 1997–98, (b) 1998–99, (c) 1999–2000, (d) 2000–2001 and (e) 2001–2002. [32015]
§ Mr. Tom ClarkeThe available information is given in the table:
§ Mr. FearnTo ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport what actions his Department can take against any(a) United Kingdom based organisation and (b) European Union based organisation which provides misleading or false tourist information about Britain on the Internet; and if his Department has taken any such action to date. [32943]
§ Mr. Tom ClarkeAdvertisements made in connection with a business and placed on the Internet are subject to essentially the same regime throughout the European Union as advertisements in other media. In the United Kingdom, the British Codes of Advertising and Sales Promotion, operated by the Advertising Standards Authority, require all advertisements to be legal, decent, honest and truthful. Where an advertiser persistently disregards the adjudications of the Authority, the Director General of Fair Trading may take action in the Courts. Additionally, the Trade Descriptions Act 1968, enforced by local authority trading standards departments, makes it an offence for a trader knowingly or recklessly to make false or misleading statements about services, accommodation or facilities. Neither the Advertising Standards Authority nor trading standards officers can take action abroad.
§ Mr. JenkinsTo ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport if he will estimate the money allocated for tourism by(a) tourist boards, and (b) local authorities, per head for (i) Staffordshire and (ii) the West Midlands for each of the last 10 years. [33043]
§ Mr. Tom Clarke[holding answer 6 March 1998]: The Government fund the national tourist boards for specific activities and programmes, not on the basis of population.
119WThe Heart of England Tourist Board includes Staffordshire and the West Midlands in its region. Each of the ten regional tourist boards (RTBs) in England is an independent company which raises money from membership subscriptions and commercial activities. Each RTB also receives a grant from the English Tourist Board (ETB). ETB grants to the Heart of England Tourist Board (HETB) in the last 10 years have been:
Year ETB grant to HETB (£) 1987–88 151,178 1988–89 166,120 1989–90 313,300 1990–91 592,540 1991–92 472,106 1992–93 461,445 1993–94 438,462 1994–95 473,939 1995–96 465,640 1996–97 509,238 Source:
Heart of England Tourist Board.
Tourism in Staffordshire and the West Midlands also benefits from the work of the ETB, whose purpose is to assist the industry in increasing tourism expenditure in England, and the British Tourist Authority (BTA) which helps market the British tourism product abroad. My Department gives grant-in-aid to the ETB and BTA. This year the ETB received £;9.9 million from my Department (£5.1 million of which it gives as grants to the Regional Tourist Boards), in addition to £2.9 million from the industry, and the BTA received £35 million in grant-in-aid plus £16 million from the industry.
As far as local authority spending is concerned, tourism promotion is not a mandatory local authority function but a discretionary one and funds are not allocated "per head" of population. Local authorities are free to make decisions on tourism funding as they see fit, on the basis of local needs and priorities. Estimates for local authority expenditure on tourism promotion, county by county, appear in the "English Heritage Monitor", published annually by English Heritage and the English Tourist Board.
§ Mr. SpringTo ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport if he will make a statement on the percentage of(a) domestic holiday makers and (b) overseas visitors to the United Kingdom who spend their holiday in England. [33815]
§ Mr. Tom ClarkeIn 1996, 77 per cent. of UK domestic holiday makers' had holidays in England. In the same year 94 percent. of overseas visitors to the UK visited England.
Source:Digest of Tourism Statistics No. 21 and Travel Trends 1996 (IPS).
§ Mr. SpringTo ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport what tourism initiatives he is undertaking in respect of(a) accommodation schemes and quality standards, (b) promoting England, (c) trade communication, (d) market and product intelligence and research, (e) training and (f) market access and information. [33811]
§ Mr. Tom ClarkeThe English Tourist Board plans to take forward initiatives in each of these areas as part of its Agenda 2000 programme. I am working closely with120W the Tourism Forum and its Working Groups to develop an effective, comprehensive strategy for tourism which will benefit the whole of the industry into the next century.
§ Mr. FearnTo ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport what is the level of Government grant-in-aid to(a) the English Tourist Board, (b) the Welsh Tourist Board, (c) the Scottish Tourist Board and (d) the Northern Ireland Tourist Board, per head of population; and what proportion of the total number of (i) overseas and (ii) domestic tourists in the UK, holiday in each tourist board area. [33039]
§ Mr. Tom ClarkeGovernment grant-in-aid to each of the UK National Tourist Boards, expressed as per head of population, is as follows:
£ Tourist board area Grant-in-aid per head of population (1998–99) England 0.20 Wales 4.92 Scotland 3.79 Northern Ireland 8.06 Source:
Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Welsh Office, Scottish Office, Department for Economic Development in Northern Ireland.
The following proportions for nights spent in each tourist board area, cover all tourism visits. Holiday visits account for 56 per cent. of all tourism nights in the UK.
Distribution by tourist board area of tourism nights spent in UK (1996) Percentage Tourist board area (i) overseas tourists1 (ii) domestic tourists England 87 78 Scotland 9 10 Wales 3 10 Northern Ireland 1 1 Unknown — 1 Total 2100 3100 1excludes visits by Irish residents, which are not available by tourist board area. 2=205 million nights. 3=455 million nights. Source:
Overseas tourists: Travel Trends, Report of the 1996 International Passenger Survey, Office for National Statistics (1997).
Domestic tourists: The UK Tourist, Statistics 1996, report of survey sponsored jointly by the statutory tourist boards (1997).
§ Mr. SpringTo ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport what support he is giving to enable the English Tourist Board to undertake its Action 2000 programme. [33506]
§ Mr. Tom ClarkeThe ETB, following consultation with the industry, has in its Action 2000 programme established clear priorities and is adopting a more strategic role. I was therefore pleased, in a difficult spending round, to be able to maintain the allocation for the ETB at the planned level which this Government inherited.
§ Mr. SpringTo ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport if he will make a statement on the grant-in-aid to the English Tourist Board in(a) 1996–97, (b) 1997–98 and (c) 1998–99. [33504]
121W
§ Mr. Tom ClarkeThe grant-in-aid to the English Tourist Board is as follows:
- 1996–97: £10.050 million
- 1997–98: £9.866 million
- 1998–99: £9.732 million.
The figures for 1996–97 and 1997–98 were set by the previous administration. I was pleased, in a difficult spending round, to be able to maintain the allocation for the ETB at the planned level which this Government inherited.
§ Mr. SpringTo ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport how many organisations and local authorities were consulted as part of the English Tourist Board's Agenda 2000 consultative exercise. [33495]
§ Mr. Tom ClarkeThe English Tourist Board arranged for Agenda 2000 publications to be distributed to 480 local authorities by the Local Government Association.
11 roadshows were held and these were attended by 327 local authority representatives, 123 questionnaires were completed by local authority representatives.
Number Total number of those attending roadshows 862 Total number of questionnaires responses 587 Detailed responses by letter 147 Tourist Information Centres 82 1From organisations representing in total over two million members.