Chris Bryant MP: speeches 2024

Speeches

• 28 Nov 2024 · Listed Building Status: Community Groups · Hansard source

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  Historic England assesses applications for listing. I want that process to be as simple as possible for community groups up and down the land, so they can steer a balance between preserving what is truly valuable and leaving communities with decaying, listed eyesores.

• 28 Nov 2024 · Listed Building Status: Community Groups · Hansard source

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  I am very happy to meet my hon. Friend. I always have to be a little bit careful about decisions that might end up coming to me, in case I have queered the pitch. I pay tribute to Councillor Race, who has spent a great deal of time on this matter. Many community groups up and down the land have tried to do precisely the same thing: bring a historical building back into community use. Obviously, we want to support that wherever possible, where it is sustainable in the long term.

• 28 Nov 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Yes!

• 28 Nov 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  rose—

• 28 Nov 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Those meetings have already taken place and will continue to take place. The hon. Lady makes a very good point. I have visited Brighton Pavilion many times, so I know that other music venues there can, I hope, come online in the near future. I know that the Secretary of State met Ed Sheeran last week—she has told me about it about 25 times—to discuss precisely that issue.

• 28 Nov 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Copyright and the protection of artists’ moral and economic rights is an absolutely essential part of ensuring that they are properly remunerated for their creativity. We will do everything in our power to make sure that the copyright regime remains, is strong, and is strongly enforced.

• 26 Nov 2024 · Project Gigabit · Hansard source

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  Lord, I had not expected that so quickly—nor did you earlier, Mr Dowd. It is great to see you in the Chair. I congratulate the hon. Member for Farnham and Bordon (Gregory Stafford) on securing the debate. I will say first that our ambition is no different from that of the previous Government, which is to get to precisely the same numbers by 2030 as was stated previously. I am pretty confident that we will be able to get there. There are significant challenges, which I will try to explain in a moment. As the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer) rightly said, the whole idea of BDUK and Project Gigabit was to enable gigabit-capable broadband to be brought to nearly every property in the UK, primarily through commercial operators advancing on the basis of commercial viability. We knew that that would be impossible in some areas, which was why there would have to be a subsidy from the Government—or the previous Government knew it, and we subscribed to that, too. The difficulty is that that precise decision by the commercial operators as to where is commercially viable changes all the time. It is a moving target; county by county, they constantly revise decisions on the properties they will cover on a commercial basis. Therefore, the decision by BDUK about how many properties to include in the subsidised roll-out also vary. That is happening at a time when the market is considering long-term investments. Openreach has decided to increase significantly the number of places it expects to roll out to on a commercial basis. Other operators are worried. In the south-west, operators have already been unable to fulfil their commitments, and other contracts have had to be entered into. That makes reaching secure outcomes in each constituency a difficult process. I have made this offer before. Some of the dramatis personae of this debate are similar to those I have met in other quarters at other times. I am happy for any individual MP who has concerns in their patch to meet my officials and those from BDUK to go through this issue village by village and do a precise piece of work. I know these are very real issues. As the hon. Member for Farnham and Bordon said in his opening remarks, this is not a luxury that is nice to have; it is essential to people’s livelihoods, economy and sometimes their lives, whether we are talking about mobile connectivity or broadband. Many aspects of that have to be delivered over the next few years. I issue one word of caution. A number of hon. Members referred to hard-to-reach properties. That is a very broad definition. There are properties that are very hard to reach where, frankly, a roll-out cannot be achieved by a commercial operator or the taxpayer. That is where, as several hon. Members have said, we must be imaginative over the next few years about alternative means of delivery. That might be a wi-fi operation or reliance on satellite. Some people have already taken up the satellite option at £75 a month, as has been mentioned, although I am not particularly advertising that. It is problematic that there is only one operator in that space. I hope there will be more in future because competition is good in this market. I would praise the previous Government for that. There is not just one operator; we have allowed competition to operate in the roll-out of broadband. Members, including some on the Government Benches, have had conversations about ducts and poles. There have been rows about the inconsiderate roll-out from some operators that have brought in street furniture that is otiose, redundant or duplicates what is already there, or where they have chosen not to use ducts because they do not want to talk to the commercial operators. I have been trying hard to ensure that all operators work as collaboratively as possible, within the bounds of competition law, to deliver broadband without obstructions. I feel as though I have had all the villages of the UK brought to mind, and I am not sure that I have managed to write them down correctly—I apologise if I get things wrong. I welcome the hon. Member for Farnham and Bordon to the House; I believe a family member was also here for a while. I have good news for him, although he might already know it, so he may not think it is as good as I do. He has been worrying about connectivity at the Beaver industrial estate, and I think AllPoints Fibre is coming early in 2025 to sort that out. I looked at the figures for superfast, ultrafast, full-fibre and gigabit in the hon. Member’s constituency. While his constituency is actually ahead of the rest of the UK on superfast—it gets more than 30 megabits per second —that is not going to be sufficient for most people in the next few years, so we want to get much higher than that. On all the other measures, his constituency is some way behind the rest of the UK. I accept that there is a challenge there, and I am thoroughly determined to meet it. The hon. Member referred to digital exclusion, in terms of physical access to gigabit-capable, ultrafast or full-fibre broadband. There are many different factors that might lead to digital exclusion. If I had a criticism of the previous Government—well, I have quite a few criticisms, but one that even they would accept as fair—it would be that we did not have a digital inclusion strategy for 10 years. In that time, in many areas of the country, whether because of poor skills, poverty, disability or the physical exclusion that the hon. Member referred to—I know it well in the south Wales valleys—there has been a level of digital exclusion that makes it impossible for people to take part in today’s economy or society. We need to address all that. It is my hope that, before we get to the end of the year, we will be able to point to the next steps in digital inclusion that we as a Government need to take. The hon. Member seemed to say that the previous Government were absolutely wonderful but left the country in a terrible state in relation to broadband, especially in his constituency. If I might gently say, Conservative Members, including the shadow Minister, have to decide which way they are going to go on that: were they a great Government or were they not really up to it? I know what the country decided. There is no rural/urban divide on this issue. I fully accept that there are specific challenges in many rural areas—my own constituency is semi-rural—but in many urban areas, while superfast broadband or gigabit-capable fibre is theoretically going down the street, it is not going into every building because of a whole series of other issues that we also have to address. That does not mean that we are redirecting Project Gigabit money away from rural to urban areas; more than 90% of the money has been spent in rural areas and will continue to be spent in rural areas. The fundamental misconception in the letter that the hon. Member signed, and which quite a lot of other Conservative Members signed, which was brought forward by the right hon. Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale), was that Project Gigabit was always designed to take gigabit-capable broadband to wherever it was needed. There was not a specific definition of rural or urban, and I am not changing that. It is need that determines where the money is spent—nothing other than that—and I fully accept that the vast majority of that is going to be in rural areas. I welcome the hon. Member for Caerfyrddin (Ann Davies) to the House; I have campaigned a lot in her seat—not very successfully. She makes a good point that many villages in rural Wales are some of the most disadvantaged in this area and in mobile connectivity, which is why I am pleased that we recently rolled out seven new enhanced masts for mobile connectivity in Wales, including, I think, in her constituency. That does not answer the broadband issue, but we hope to address that through Building Digital UK. My hon. Friend the Member for York Outer (Mr Charters) referred to t’internet. On the defence site in his constituency, my understanding is that that is a Ministry of Defence responsibility, but we will chase that up and write to him on that issue. He is absolutely right—Defence families should not be at a worse disadvantage than those across the road who are not in Defence properties. I know that the Secretary of State for Defence is keen to address those issues, because I have spoken to him about it. The hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) referred to Starlink, and he is absolutely right. He rightly gave a list of villages, which were Warcop, Hilton, Murton—with a “u”, not an “e”—and Ormside, about which BDUK is presently in the process of negotiating. I do not want to descope at this point, because I very much hope that we will get to a resolution in the next month, but he makes a strong point. If it proves necessary to abandon ship, as it were, he can come back at me on that. My hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Joe Morris) —we must stop meeting like this—was sitting in the same place in the Chamber last week when we had a debate about tourism in his constituency. He is right that the tourist industry cannot survive without proper broadband. To rectify some of the issues that he was talking about last week, including with some of the beautiful villages in his constituency, we need to be able to roll out broadband. I need to be careful about this point, but there will be properties that are not commercially viable or viable for the taxpayer to fund, because they are simply too difficult to reach. I think everybody accepts that, but it will be a tiny proportion—probably 1% or fewer. As several Members have said, however, we at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology definitely need to accelerate the process of thinking about the alternative mechanisms we can provide. Some people are already relying on Starlink, but we may need to come up with other solutions. The Lib Dem spokesperson, the hon. Member for Harpenden and Berkhamsted (Victoria Collins), is absolutely right that we need to look for technical solutions. That is why, through UK Research and Innovation and the research and development side of DSIT, we are keen to look at those areas. The hon. Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord) talked about villages where broadband stopped 100 metres short, which is absolutely infuriating for everybody. Obviously, that is the kind of thing that we want to address. I know that he has already had conversations, and we have another meeting with several of his colleagues coming up, so we will be able to address those issues then. I know bits of the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Torcuil Crichton) well, as he knows, and I have visited where some of my family are from. We need to look for very creative solutions in his constituency, because he is right that if someone is making Harris tweed, they want to be able to sell it, but they cannot create a business unless they have proper high-speed broadband. I note that we have superfast on Iona. I do not think there are many monks left there, but there is a community. In fact, it has a couple of hotels that I have stayed in, which also want and need connectivity. I will give the hon. Member for Farnham and Bordon a couple of minutes to wind up, but I will quickly refer to my hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (James Naish), who is right that we need to do something about flexi permits. We have already written to the Department for Transport about that. My hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Chris Bloore) has similar issues in his patch. Finally, I welcome the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge, to his post, as I failed to do when we had DSIT questions last week. He has to decide whether the last Government were absolutely brilliant or whether they completely failed in this area.

• 26 Nov 2024 · Project Gigabit · Hansard source

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  I do not know where the hon. Gentleman got that from.

• 20 Nov 2024 · 5G Roll-out · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is right: that work has to be a priority for businesses, families and everybody engaged in her constituency, and for the public sector. We want the Ministry of Defence in her constituency, for instance, to have the highest-quality data access possible, so that we can deliver more effective and productive government across the whole United Kingdom. The work will indeed be a priority for us.

• 20 Nov 2024 · 5G Roll-out · Hansard source

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  Unfortunately, the UK’s roll-out of 5G has been far too slow. According to Opensignal, the UK ranks 22nd out of 25 European countries for 5G download speeds and availability after 14 years of Conservative rule. We are determined to change that, aiming to have higher-quality stand-alone 5G in all populated areas by 2030.

• 20 Nov 2024 · 5G Roll-out · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman has just said what I said a few minutes ago. It is great that Plaid Cymru is signing up to the Labour party’s agenda these days, but it is upsetting that he forgot to mention the seven high-quality masts extending better coverage of 4G in Wales that have been installed in the last couple of months alone. Of course I will happily meet him, and place in the Library a copy of the letter that I received from Ofcom that makes the precise point that we need to do much better in recognising the real experience of people’s mobile connectivity rather than a theoretical, ethereal version of it.

• 20 Nov 2024 · Digital Connectivity: Rural Areas · Hansard source

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  I am pleased to say that the Secretary of State says he will indeed visit when he possibly can. There is a really important point here: poor digital connectivity excludes so many communities up and down this country. We have no chance of creating the economic growth that we want in this country unless we take the whole of the country with us. That is why it is so disgraceful that we have not had a proper digital inclusion strategy for 10 years. That is something we will remedy.

• 20 Nov 2024 · Digital Connectivity: Rural Areas · Hansard source

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  We are improving digital connectivity in rural areas by rolling out 30 Project Gigabit contracts, filling in gaps that are not being met commercially, predominantly in rural areas, and delivering better 4G mobile coverage and eliminating partial notspots through the shared rural network.

• 20 Nov 2024 · Digital Connectivity: Rural Areas · Hansard source

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  I am very happy to meet the right hon. Gentleman as well. I am not the Pope, but it feels like I will be having a series of audiences over the next few weeks. The right hon. Gentleman has villages, I have villages. If only he knew someone who had been the Chancellor in recent years, who would have been able to deliver the financial support that we really needed to secure the investment.

• 20 Nov 2024 · Digital Connectivity: Rural Areas · Hansard source

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  I am getting more popular day by day, which is unusual in my life. I am, of course, very happy to discuss the issues in Crowthorne. One thing that really concerns me is that quite often, the published version of what connectivity is available in everybody’s constituency will say that there is 92%, 93% or 95% of connectivity from all four operators, but actually, if we stand there with a mobile phone, there will not be any connectivity whatsoever. I have written to Ofcom and it has written back saying, for instance, that in that precise location the coverage may be above or below the predicted level, leading some consumers to not get the service they expected. There is a phrase for that.

• 20 Nov 2024 · Digital Connectivity: Rural Areas · Hansard source

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  I am very happy to meet my hon. Friend, not necessarily at the same time as I am meeting the hon. Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith), but Haslington is a bit like Cuddington: they have exactly the same set of problems. I am sure many hon. Members from across the House have similar issues in their constituencies that they have a burning desire to raise with me. I am happy to make arrangements for hon. Members to meet officials and go through issues case by case. In relation to the 999 emergency my hon. Friend referred to, I would be grateful if he could provide me with specific details. All 999 calls from mobile phones should automatically roam on to another available network if there is no signal from their own provider, so I want to get to the bottom of the issue in that case.

• 20 Nov 2024 · Project Gigabit: Rural Areas · Hansard source

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  The vast majority—more than 90%—of the spending in Project Gigabit has gone to rural areas because those are the areas most in need. There is absolutely no change in our policy to that. However, some urban areas have significant problems as well and we need to rectify those. The hon. Gentleman points out some of the issues in his own constituency. I am happy to provide him too with a meeting, if he wants. I see he has nodded.

• 20 Nov 2024 · Project Gigabit: Rural Areas · Hansard source

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  Project Gigabit has always been designed to deliver gigabit-capable broadband to premises that will not be met by the market, regardless of whether they are in urban or rural areas. Most premises deemed uncommercial by the market are in rural areas, but consistent evidence suggests that we will also need to intervene in some urban areas to achieve full national gigabit coverage. Funding will continue to be provided where it is needed.

• 20 Nov 2024 · Shared Rural Network · Hansard source

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  The Government and industry are working together to accelerate the shared rural network and deliver substantial improvements to outdoor 4G mobile coverage across the UK. In the past few months, the Government have activated 13 publicly funded masts across the UK, and there are now 27 Government-funded extended area service mast upgrades delivering 4G.

• 20 Nov 2024 · Shared Rural Network · Hansard source

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  We support developing all the plans set out under the shared rural network and Project Gigabit—those plans were regularly announced by the previous Government, but they never actually put any money into the budget. There was never a line in a Department for Science, Innovation and Technology budget that said, “This money is guaranteed for the future.” We are putting our money where our mouth is and we are determined to ensure everybody has proper connectivity. Frankly, that is essential for people’s businesses, whether they are farmers or running any other kind of business, up and down the land. We will deliver that.

• 20 Nov 2024 · Shared Rural Network · Hansard source

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  I know about Cuddington, because the hon. Gentleman told me about it yesterday. Cuddington is such a typical English village that it has featured in “Midsomer Murders”, which is fictional—a bit like the previous Government’s financial affairs. I know we have said that the desire to please is not part of what Ministers are meant to do, but I do have a desire to please him and his constituents. The Government will work as fast as we can with industry to try to develop 4G in his constituency. I am happy to arrange for a meeting between him and my officials to ensure he has street-by-street analysis of how we can do that.

• 20 Nov 2024 · Project Gigabit · Hansard source

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  More than 30 Project Gigabit contracts are currently in place, with a total value of almost £2 billion, and more are in the pipeline. In the past few months, the first premises have been connected as part of Project Gigabit contracts in areas including Norfolk, West Yorkshire and south Wiltshire, and the build has now started in earnest in other parts of the country.

• 20 Nov 2024 · Project Gigabit · Hansard source

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  The world heritage aspects relate to my Department for Culture, Media and Sport responsibilities, but my hon. Friend is right about Ironbridge. I hope that we will be able to announce something shortly in relation to extending gigabit coverage in his constituency through a procurement via Openreach.

• 20 Nov 2024 · Project Gigabit · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman is right: there is a series of issues about the security and safety of connectivity in areas that suffer from particular weather conditions. We had a successful summit on Monday morning to discuss the closing down of the public services network to ensure that everybody will be secure, but I assure him that we will work closely with the Scottish Government to ensure that the roll-out in all such areas works in the interests of businesses, whatever the weather conditions.

• 19 Nov 2024 · Tourism: Northumberland · Hansard source

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  I again welcome you to the Chair, Sir Roger, and it is good to welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Joe Morris). He is actually named in my documents from the Department as “Joe Hexham”; that is probably how he will be presenting himself at the next general election as well, I should think—unless boundaries change in some bizarre, unhelpful way. It is good to see so many new MPs wanting to talk about tourism and the visitor economy, because it is so important to so many parts of the country. As part of the creative industries, it is important that the Government are saying that it is also part of our industrial future. My hon. Friend the Member for Hexham said in passing that this is about not just the legacy of the past—he listed some of the things in Northumberland from our historical past that are important—but what we do today. One of the things we need to change about our whole tourism strategy as a country is that there is a danger that international visitors think, “The United Kingdom never changes. It’s always got that Parliament building, castles, the monarchy—things like that. You can go next year or the year after.” Actually, we want people to think that now is the time to come to the United Kingdom: “We’re not going to put it off. We’re going to come now.” If they come now, they might come again next year because they want to see a different part of the United Kingdom. I have a word of caution. My hon. Friend the Member for Hexham said, “Wouldn’t it be a good idea if, when we as the UK are selling our tourism abroad, we specifically mention Northumberland?” I get it. I am a Welsh MP, and I have often said that it would be good if we started mentioning Wales a bit more in our tourism marketing around the world. The question is whether it works. I have an anecdotal story, but it is true none the less: Charlotte Church, a young Welsh singer—at the time much younger—was asked to go and sing, for George Bush I think, in the White House. She sang very beautifully, and afterwards George Bush was introduced to her and asked where she was from. She said, “Wales.”. He said, “What state is that in?” To which she said, “Terrible.”. There was a complete meeting of minds. That story makes an important point about our tourism strategy. I completely agree that it is embarrassing that so many international visitors conceive of coming to the UK as being only about visiting London—or, as I said in the other debate, perhaps Bath or Oxford and Cambridge as a day visit and then maybe Edinburgh. There is far more to see in the United Kingdom. The question is how we best effect that change. We may be able to do several things. There is no point in my rehearsing the numbers of people who go to the north-east in compared with London, and the difference in spend; my hon. Friend did that perfectly. I want to change that, but that will require a five or 10-year strategy, which I hope we will be able to publish over the coming months. I would be interested to talk to people from different parts of the country about making sure that we put a strategy in place that will genuinely work. My hon. Friend also talked about the difficulty of ensuring that local people are not shunted out by the tourist influx. One of the things I am keen to work on more is the question of short-term lets. If, as often happens on the coastline, large numbers of short-term lets are all full for two or three months and completely empty for the rest of the year, that does not seem like a win for the local community. That is why, building on what the previous Government did with their legislation on short-term lets, we hope to launch a consultation fairly soon on how we can develop a register of such lets, so that at least we know what is out there, and on how we could use that register to better effect to try to get the benefits of tourism, including visitors not just coming during the day, but staying overnight, without the downsides that sometimes come with that. Several Members mentioned particular places in Northumberland. I think “Vera” got a look-in several times, which is inevitable—I do not know what Northumberland is going to do if “Vera” ever stops. Brenda is a wonderful actress, but I do not know whether she has another 50 years in her. My favourite place, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Max Wilkinson), is Lindisfarne. We have a little painting of Lindisfarne in our downstairs toilet at home in Wales: it is a place of phenomenal beauty and extraordinary history. It is extremely well run and has thousands of visitors every year. I have swum in the sea at Cullercoats—in winter, too, which is quite an ambitious thing. Both Bamburgh castle and Alnwick castle have been referred to. In fact, I think I am right in saying that Northumberland has more castles than any other county in England. Wales might beat everywhere else on the castle front, but that is Edward I for you. I think Alnwick castle is the second largest in England; it certainly has the second largest number of rooms. It is still the home of the Northumberlands and an extraordinary place to visit. Tourism for music was not mentioned, but the north-east has a phenomenal music tradition. Sam Fender was on in Newcastle when Pink was on in Gateshead: I know that because I went to Pink. It was a phenomenal concert—the whole region was alive, with every single hotel room in the whole area taken—but people may wonder whether it is a good idea to have two massive concerts at the same time, how that can be managed to best effect and whether it is good for the local economy or whether it would be better to spread them out. My hon. Friend the Member for Cramlington and Killingworth (Emma Foody) referred to having the best fish and chips. I have been in many debates in my years in Parliament, and I must have heard nearly every MP say that the best fish and chips come from such and such a place in their constituency. I warn her against that, because you end up eating an awful lot of fish and chips in the process. I am sure her frame can take it, but I would just say that what makes a good fish and chip shop is actually its range—and the best fish and chip shop equipment is provided by Preston and Thomas. It is no longer functioning in Cardiff, but it had the best range none the less. I know that because my father’s best man was either Preston or Thomas. I can’t remember which. I turn to the destination development partnership pilots. Up in the north-east, as I saw when I visited not long ago, there is a real determination to seize the opportunity, not just in individual constituencies or local authority areas but across the whole region. I really praise Kim McGuinness: she is absolutely determined that the numbers are going to change. A key part of it is about trying to bring in a new centre—let us hope that it may become a national centre of excellence for hospitality and tourism—based in Newcastle, but working across the whole of the region. It would be good to get additional investment in that. One thing that has often worried me—this relates to a point that the shadow Minister made—is that in many other countries around the world, people are so proud of tourism that they think of a job in the hospitality industry not as something you do if you really have to, because you have to pay for a course at university or are on a gap year or whatever, but as something people do for the whole of their life, because they are proud of the community they live in and want people to enjoy it. It is a proper career for a whole life. To enable that here, we need to do several things. We need proper determination across the country that that is what we are going to do. We have to change the whole ethos around serving people in the hospitality industry. We have to enable the industry to work with the Government to develop more career pathways. Tourism must be a key part of the industrial strategy. All the different bits of it, from the moment somebody lands in this country to the moment they leave, need to be singing in the same way. We also have to reform the apprenticeship levy so that it works for small businesses and the creative industries in general. We have to bind together all of the creative industries: we have already talked about music, but lots of people travel for sport as well. It all needs to work together if we are really going to change the prosperity of this country as it derives from tourism. That is why what is happening in the north-east is so important. I visited not long ago, and I expect to visit in the next fortnight as well. I am very keen to work with those on the ground who want to ensure that tourism becomes an even more significant part of the economy in the north-east. I welcome the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Meriden and Solihull East (Saqib Bhatti). I have written down, “Welcome him and be nice.” To be fair, I am quite fond of him: we were on the Foreign Affairs Committee together. Where it is possible for us all to drive the economy forward together, there is no partisan advantage. I am very happy to work with him. I know he has my number and I have his, in more ways than one. I very much hope that we can work together. The hon. Gentleman asked about a sector-wide plan. As I said, in the next few weeks I will make a speech about tourism in which I hope to lay out some of our ambitions. It may be that we want to do a much more substantial piece of work on our long-term and medium-term ambitions in tourism for the whole of the United Kingdom. We will be thinking about that over the next few weeks. The hon. Gentleman asked about the issue of seasonal staffing. That is a legitimate point that relates to issues that other parts of the economy have had with seasonal workers coming in from other parts of the country. I was really struck, when I was talking to the French Tourism Minister a couple of weeks ago, by the fact that we have a seasonal workers deal with France so that British people can work in ski resorts there. It affects the best part of 100,000 people, who go over and work there every year. It may be that there are perfectly sensible arrangements that we can come to in that regard. The hon. Gentleman asked about the additional support that we will provide. That sounds like the Conservative party asking for additional spending, but the problem with additional spending is that it normally requires additional taxation—this is one of the problems of opposition. My party has been in opposition in Parliament for more of my years than it has been in government. If I may make a suggestion to him, it is that you cannot ask for one without willing the other. If the Leader of the Opposition made a fatal flaw last week in her questions to the Prime Minister, it was not recognising that if you are going to ask for more money to be spent, you also have to will the ends and the means. I fully understand the problems that the visitor and hospitality sector faces. It is tough running a pub or a restaurant, and it has been for many years. The margins are extremely narrow. The hon. Member for Cheltenham said that we had slashed business rate relief, or cut it—I don’t know that he used the word “slashed”—from 75% to 40%. He could have said that we took it from 0% to 40%, because it was not guaranteed beyond the end of the year. We have made it permanent, which is a good thing. I fully understand the problems that the sector faces, but some of them relate to long-term stability and sustainability and trying to ensure that businesses have the staff they need. I hope that the north-east will be essential in developing that for the whole of the United Kingdom, perhaps in association with other countries around the world. We also need an NHS that functions, buses that turn up on time, a railway system that works, local authorities that mend the roads and a planning system that works and is properly resourced. The whole public sector needs to function in order for the private sector to function. That is why I am proud of the Budget: in the medium and long term, it will help us to secure our economic future. As I think my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham and all Members in this Chamber will agree, tourism is an essential part of our economic future. It is the fourth largest industry in the world. We have lost share in that over recent years, but even if we were to continue losing share, we could still grow it within the United Kingdom. I am absolutely determined to do that, but it cannot be based just on bringing more and more people to London. I would like more people to come to London, but it cannot just be about that. It has to be based on understanding the full panoply of what we have to offer across the whole of the United Kingdom. Sometimes that will be based on art forms, like being able to see where films or TV series were made or where musicians are from. I note that Framlingham castle is now apparently more famous for Ed Sheeran’s song “Castle on the Hill” than it is for Queen Mary discovering that she was about to be Queen, which was historically what it sold itself on. I go right back to the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham made at the very beginning. It is not just the legacy of the past that we need to celebrate in our tourism; it is what Britain is today. That is the best way to secure a long-term, secure economic future for our tourism industry in Northumberland and across the whole of the United Kingdom.