Tourism Alliance update

In this newsletter:

• See you next week?
• Parliamentary debates on tourism
• Employment rights bill webinar – recording and slides

ICYMI Virtual roundtable with IPO on Licensing and Collective Management Organisations (and date change)

See you next week?

We are looking forward to seeing many members at the Tourism Policy Conference next week. Quite a few people have booked places just in the past few days, and tickets will be on sale until Monday evening if you have not grabbed yours yet.

 

A reminder that we recently announced that Sir Chris Bryant MP, the Tourism Minister, will be joining us to give a keynote address, which should be extremely enlightening (see below for some comments by the Minister in Parliament this week)

 

The full list of speakers and panels and all details can be found on the booking site: https://buytickets.at/thetourismalliance/1259649

 

For those who have registered, joining details, including programme timings, will be circulated tomorrow, Friday 21st November.

Buy Tickets Now

 

Parliamentary debates on tourism

In Westminster Hall this week there were two debates on tourism – in Bedfordshire and Northumberland secured by Blake Stephenson MP (Cons, Mid Bedfordshire) and Joe Morris MP (Lab, Hexham) respectively.

 

The Hansard of the debate on Tourism in Bedfordshire can be found here, and the debate on Tourism in Northumberland here. Both MPs made an excellent job of promoting the tourism offer and importance of the sector in their counties.

 

The Northumberland debate was also the first outing for the new Shadow Tourism Minister, Saqib Bhatti MP (Cons, Meriden and Solihull East) who took over the brief recently after responsibilities were shuffled after the recent leadership election.

 

There are one or two nuggets in the Minister’s response. Firstly, he confirmed that there will be a further consultation on the implementation of statutory registration. While this will give us another opportunity to have input into the scheme, it will mean a further delay before the scheme will be up-and-running.

 

The Minister also talked about the skills and employment agenda (something that is on our programme for next week’s conference).

 

The Shadow Minister pressed the Government on when it will publish a long-term strategy on tourism. In response, the Minister said, “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.”

 

Employment rights bill webinar – recording and slides

This week we were pleased to host a webinar on the Government’s plans for employment law reform with Matthew Potter, Partner at Howes Percival LLP. Thank you to all who joined – we hope it was helpful.

 

We have recorded that webinar which you can access here.

You can also download Matthew’s slides, which include his contact details for anyone who may want to follow up directly, here.

 

ICYMI Virtual roundtable with IPO on Licensing and Collective Management Organisations (and date change)

Colleagues in parts of the sector have been raising concerns about the apparent proliferation of Collective Management Organisations (CMOs) issuing demands for payments in order to permit the playing of TV programmes and films. Some like PRS for Music are well-known, but more appear to be coming into existence, representing ever-more niche elements of the potential copyright holders.

 

One which has becoming more widely known recently has been the Audiovisual Licensing Alliance (AVLA).

 

The Intellectual Property Office (IPO) is the National Competent Authority (NCA) responsible for monitoring and enforcing compliance with the relevant regulations. We have arranged a roundtable discussion with the IPO where they will brief us on their role, how CMOs work under the regulations, how businesses and organisations can raise issues and complaints, and listen to feedback from the sector.

 

That session will be on 4th December 2024, 1400-1530 (note a day earlier than previously advertised). If your organisation would like to be included please RSVP to Richard.Toomer@tourismalliance.com