Smooth words and little action

The Government talks the talk, but then doesn't deliver, says Stuart Harrison.

Shortly after this Labour Government began its first term of office I sat in the lecture theatre of the good ship Oriana and listened to a young man relating Cool Britannia to our cherished tourist industry.

He was obviously part of the fresh, new, Blairite momentum, with ideas that came tumbling out of Islington dinner parties before our eyes were opened to superficial, popularist spin. With one spread of the hand he dismissed heritage, history and pageant and in their place waved in words such as speed, invention and fashion.

I often think back to this presentation at the Marketing Forum. This post-modernist "for the moment" approach has been highly damaging.

We have been palmed off with smooth words and little action. Yet if we measured commitment by the number of dinners Chris Smith accepted as chief executive officer for our industry we would be the longest snout in the trough of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Instead, we have been the sport.

At least the pre-Blair Conservatives were consistent. They didn't really understand the enormity of the business and responded accordingly.

This Government talks the talk, then doesn't deliver. It is still hung up about unequally supporting the devolved powers over England, and one can only cry over the lack of real authority, remit and money invested in the English Tourism Council.

This Government lost the plot on day one when it chose not to give the tourism ministry role to Tom Pendry, who had shadowed so ably. Tom, John Thurso and John Lee have been the only parliamentarians with an understanding of the business.

Perhaps more than anything it is the insincerity that is the most galling. The challenge is, will it take the twin tragedies of foot-and-mouth and 11 September to finally make the Government see sense? Can it turn its beautifully crafted words and posturing into actions?

Kim Howells took office and promptly criticised our standards. His boss, Tessa Jowell, is doing the hokey cokey with the potential promise of marketing money for England. In July I listened to her making her maiden tourism speech to the British Incoming Tour Operators Association (BITOA).

Compared with the well-balanced, factual and informative speech delivered by BITOA's chairman Aidan Ford, it contained little in the way of substance, and reiterated many old clich‚s.

Now, we are told, Tessa Jowell has announced the death of Cool Britannia. According to The Times, she described the label, and other attempts to define Britishness, as meaningless.

Could she, by chance, define British tourism as meaningful?

STUART HARRISON runs the Profitable Hotel Company and is a Visiting Fellow of Oxford Brookes University