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New culture and tourism minister Sajid Javid is the opposite of his predecessor Maria Miller, and ensuring he becomes a supporter of travel would be a wise investment, writes Labour candidate and former Abta lobbyist Luke Pollard
Maria Miller’s departure from the Cabinet was painfully drawn out and utterly predictable. Swamped by more dubious expense claims, tourism lost yet another Cabinet Minister.
If we’re being frank, Maria Miller was as unpopular and forgettable with the travel industry as she was with her own Tory MPs. A sure sign of how many people you’ve offended on the way up is how few support you on the way down, and this remains true.
She did little for our sector and her departure won’t really be missed by many including those in domestic tourism who enjoy better relations with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s (DCMS) slimmed down staff and double-jobbing Ministers than the outbound sector.
Things are very different now at the DCMS. Sajid Javid is not Maria Miller, in any way. Bright, determined, ruthless and on the up, he is the polar opposite of his predecessor. But is this good news for the industry?
Here’s what we know: when he was the Minister in charge of APD he moved little publicly but did engage in many more private discussions, and that did produce the goods recently. He is a champion of free markets and a living embodiment of Thatcherite principles.
Travel is a ruthless business but one cushioned by government protection – the Atol scheme being the best example. Mr Javid prefers a looser role for the state and that’s not exactly what our friends at the CAA do currently, is it?
Mr Javid is also the Chancellor of the Exhequer’s golden boy and a firm favourite in the Osborne camp. While Mr Javid’s skills at climbing the Ministerial ladder have been impressive it has been because of George Osborne’s sponsorship that he now sits around the Cabinet table.
And that’s important because within the Coalition, the Treasury is where the power is and that’s where Mr Javid came from and that’s where Mr Osborne controls the levers of government.
It is worth noting due to the cuts DCMS doesn’t have its own building anymore. It shares the same grand Whitehall building as the Treasury so Sajid Javid won’t be moving too far away from the centre of power.
So what for tourism? Since 2010 DCMS has really become a Whitehall backwater – a haven for those on the up or on the way down. Maria Miller was on the way down, Sajid Javid is on the way up. His brief will be simple: stop the department being a vote loser as the General Election approaches.
The truth is the travel industry often over-estimates the importance of DCMS. For outbound it would be wiser for us to focus our attention on the Treasury and the Department for Transport. That’s where the power over the issues that really matter to us rests.
Sajid Javid is a competent and bright Minister, a rare thing for a Labour candidate like me to admit, and even rarer in a government often defined by the opposite. He won’t be in charge of tourism for long but he will remember us if we play our cards right.
He’s a man on the move and now he’s in Cabinet he’s a friend the industry could do with having. We shouldn’t really expect much from his department for us before the General Election, but that doesn’t mean his support for tourism, especially outbound, won’t be useful.
For all the tourism lobbyists, the few that there are, good relations with the new Secretary of State won’t deliver a quick return but it may be a wise investment in where he goes next.